Santana mine is conventional open pit mining.

Mining activities commenced in June 2021 but were constrained initially due to access limitations based on the topography of the Nicho Norte starter pit location. These limitations continue to decrease as additional benches are extracted and mining production levels expand accordingly.

Mineralized material from the early phases (June/July) was placed on the leach pad and utilized as test material for the final commissioning/optimization of the project processing equipment.

The primary focus of the early ramp-up operations at Nicho Norte is to move the mine into commercial production while efficiently minimizing the upfront capital requirements. The scale of mining operations will continue to increase as the available working area for equipment in the starter pit expands with depth. In addition, the amount of mineralized material available for gold extraction (as a % of the total material stacked on the leach pad) will also continue to increase. Currently a significant portion of this material (and the contained gold) is unavailable for recovery as it is located in areas being utilized as working surfaces for equipment to stack new material on the leach pad. This situation will continue to improve as the ramp-up continues.

Crushing operations are currently active with the crushing equipment relocated to adjacent to the leach pad for efficient transfer of crushed material for stacking. Mineralized material containing in excess of 0.5 g/t Au is currently being crushed to <3/4” in size while lower grade material is being stacked on the leach pad as run-of-mine (“ROM”) following significant fragmentation from blasting.

All three sets of gold recovery (“carbon”) columns at the Santana process plant have been thoroughly tested and are functional at design capacity. Reagent mixing systems have been successfully commissioned and are currently in use.

Gold extraction continues from initial mineralized material stacked on the leach pad. Following a period to allow gold concentrations to increase in the pregnant solution pond, gold recovery to carbon is underway.