and this article is just confirming what you are saying...

and this article is just confirming what you are saying Jojosydney. Fortunately I am doing the same as yourself. Accumulatingin TMR

Tamaya brings Lichkvaz to life

Chris Leitch
Friday, 24 August 2007


IT HAS taken more than two decades but the Lichkvaz project will finally move into production next year after majority owner Tamaya Resources yesterday announced its decision to develop the mine's two gold-silver-copper deposits.



Tamaya managing director Michael Fischer

Tamaya is relocating the Rishton carbon-in-leach gold plant it purchased earlier this year from Queensland to Lichkvaz, in Armenia.

Managing director Mike Fischer told MiningNews.net the plant is expected to be commissioned in December next year and at full production capacity of 100,000 ounces of gold per year by early 2009.

Sydney-based Tamaya, which holds an 86% interest in the mine, acquired the project earlier this year after merging with minerals explorer Iberian Resources.

Lichkvaz was drilled and tested over many years when Armenia was a state of Soviet Russia but Tamaya is the first company to mine the area.

"It's been developed over a 25 to 30 year period by the Russian system but there has been no real mining there as such," Fischer said.

"There has been some small scale mining and gravity gold production, but that's on a very small scale. It's the first time it's been mined with a proper metallurgical plan."

Capital costs of development is estimated to be about $60 million as Tamaya plans to use infrastructure from the mine's previous exploration.

The mine's operating costs are estimated at $330/oz gold, which includes royalties payable to Global Gold and the Armenian Government.

Tamaya has reported the 677,000oz gold resource as inferred until it can verify the Russian data as JORC-compliant by check drilling, due to the age of the data.

The check drilling will be completed in the next eight to nine months but Fischer said he doesn't expect to see a great difference in their results to the historical data.

"Normally they would be indicated but there is an incredible amount of data and it's all based on the development that the Russians did," he said.

"We going to basically drill some check holes and once those check holes are completed, we feel that a high proportion of the inferred resource will become indicated.

"It's quite old data as well. There's nothing wrong with the data, it's just that we don't have confirmation of the QAQC procedures that were used to ascertain the grades of samples that were taken, so we'll call it inferred until we've completed our own check drilling."