The Salares Norte project is located in the northern part of the Maricunga Belt; an area with a predominance of Cenozoic volcanic rocks, comprising eroded strato-volcanos, volcanic domes and pyroclastic rocks. Mineralisation is contained in a high-sulphidation epithermal system, hosted mainly by a breccia complex along the contact of two volcanic domes of andesitic and dacitic composition.

Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves have been delineated by drilling in two separate deposits, Brecha Principal and Agua Amarga, which are located ~500m apart. Most of the mineralisation known to date is oxidised. The sulphide mineralisation contains mainly pyrite, is generally lower grade and lower volume, and has lower processing recovery than the oxide material.

The Brecha Principal and Agua Amarga deposits will be mined by a contractor using open-pit mining methods. Mining will occur in six phases over nine years, including two years of pre-stripping, starting in Brecha Principal and finishing in Agua Amarga. Ultimately, the two pits will merge into a single pit due to the backslope. Waste will be placed in either the south or north WSF. All ore will be hauled to either the RoM pad or one of the grade-bin stockpiles, south of the pits.

The process flowsheet includes single stage crushing, SAG and ball milling.

The process plant, designed to process 2Mtpa, will be located southeast of the main pit at ~4,500m amsl. Ore will be crushed, milled and thickened, with thickener underflow pumped to cyanide leaching. Slurry from the leaching stage will feed a counter-current washing and solid liquid separation process through a twostage counter-current decantation (CCD) circuit. Metals in the solution will be recovered by zinc precipitation in the Merrill-Crowe process. Tailings slurry obtained from the underflow of the second CCD stage will be scavenged by a CIP circuit.

Following two years of construction and pre-stripping, processing of the Brecha Principal deposit will commence in 2023, followed by the Agua Amarga deposit. Waste will be stored in two WSFs. Ore will be processed at a rate of 2Mtpa. The process flowsheet includes singlestage crushing, SAG and ball milling, leaching in agitated tanks, and hybrid metal extraction employing both Merrill-Crowe and CIP. Tailings from the ........