The gold mineralisation at La India is interpreted as to have been deposited in a high level, low sulphidation epithermal system. The mineralisation itself occurs associated both with quartz vein systems and within well-confined hydrothermal breccias.

The veins and stockwork zones are hosted within massive andesites, andesitic and felsic tuffs or felsic lava flow deposits. Veins are typically less than 3 m in width, but stockwork zones and stacked stockwork-vein zones can be up to 25 m wide.

Quartz veins, often including a brecciated component, vary in thickness and are most typically between 0.7 m and 2 m in thickness. In many areas, the wallrock hosts a breccia or stockwork zone with vuggy quartz veinlets up to 5 cm thick and accounting for up to 70% of the rock mass. The breccia/stockwork zone is typically up to 10 m thick and is associated with silicahaematite alteration. The quartz in the breccia zone may be gold mineralised, although the country rock component means that gold grades are diluted compared to the veins.

The grade of gold and silver can vary from a few grams per tonne to significant intersections with grades in excess of 30 g/t (>1 oz/t). Gold mineralisation occurs as fine gold-silver amalgam with a gold to silver ratio of 1 to 1.5.

The ?Central Breccia? Deposit is interpreted as a gold-mineralised hydrothermal breccia with, low grade gold mineralisation is associated with carbonate breccia cement and high-grade gold mineralisation is associated with argillic alteration and sulphide mineralisation.

The La India Vein Set comprises two cross-cutting structures. The bulk of the mineral resource is hosted by the India-California structure, a normal fault striking 330° and dipping ENE at approximately 70° in the southern zone, 50-60° in the central zone and 45° in the northern zone. The India-California structure displays evidence of trans-tensional movement with a sinistral transverse component inferred. In the hangingwall zone a series of steep-dipping veins have formed in contact with the main structure that are interpreted as tension gash fill. The result is a thick mineralised sequence of anastomosing quartz veins and breccias. At the southern strike extent of the structure the mineralised veins do not reach surface but drilling has demonstrated that the mineralised fault system remains open along strike at depth.

The gold mineralisation at America occurs along the faulted contacts which separate three structural blocks. The America-Escondido structure forms two of the three recognised block boundaries. The structure is characterized by a 60° bend between the America fault which strikes 300° and dips approximately 55° to the northeast and the Escondido fault which strikes north and dips at approximately 45° to the east. Both the America and Escondido fault limbs are planar normal faults, typically 1-3m wide and characterized by the development of sand to gravel-grade cataclastic textures on the principal fault plane and small, metre-scale tension gashes in the hangingwall. A wider quartz breccia has developed at the flexure zone. The Constancia veins are hosted by a steeper dipping structure striking at 270-290° and dipping at approximately 70° to the north.

The Central Breccia is a multi-stage hydrothermal breccia deposit hosted by a massive porphyritic andesite located at the centre of the graben-like structure that runs down the axis of the America Vein Set near the intersection with the regional cross-cutting NE-Fault. Drilling has shown that the andesite overlies a felsic pyroclastic breccia. Two stages of hydrothermal breccia development are recognised, an early hydraulic breccia with evidence of clast movement and rotation and a silica-cemented microbreccia matrix, and a later crack and fill brecciation with calcite-cement containing anomalous gold values formed under a more passive dilational regime. The Central Breccia deposit is interpreted as a breccia pipe and is characterised by wide zones of jigsaw-fit chlorite-altered andesite, cemented by silicified microbreccia and crystalline calcite.

The PFS envisages the development of a large open pit to exploit the La India deposit which is planned to be approximately 1,800 m long, 560 m wide, with a maximum depth of 300 m.

A PFS level open pit mining study has been completed on the La India deposit consisting of the development of a mining block model, pit optimisation, mine design, production scheduling, mining equipment and labour estimation, mining operating strategy and mining cost estimation. No underground mining methods have been evaluated in this case.

Mining recovery and dilution factors for the La India open pit have been based on a regularised 2.5 m x 2.5 m x 2.5 m diluted mining model and a cut-off grade of 0.75 g/t Au. The cut-off grade has been derived from preliminary cost and technical parameters defined at the commencement of the study. The average ore loss and dilution with the pit design is 5.2% and 12.4%, respectively. The mining operations assume a highly selective mining method in mineralised zones.

The mining operation consists of a conventional drill, blast, load and haul operation with material hauled to the WRDs, backfill areas, LG stockpile, HG stockpile, RoM stockpile or directly tipped at the crusher.

Condor retained Lycopodium to undertake the process plan design aspects of the PFS. Lycopodium’s scope of work included providing preliminary design, capital costs, and operating costs for an 800,000 tpa gold process plant and associated infrastructure.

The results of this metallurgical investigation demonstrate that material from La India can by processed by either a standard CIP cyanidation process or by CIL cyanidation that would include crushing, grinding, agitated cyanide leaching, gold and silver adsorption onto activated carbon, gold and silver desorption, electrowinning and refining.

The process plant design allows for fluctuations in mine production throughput. The ore is clean, of high hardness and extremely high abrasion, and with average life-of-mine (LoM) head grades of 3.0 g/t gold and 5.3 g/t silver. To accommodate for the variability in head grades, the plant is designed for head grades of 3.4 g/t gold and 5.8 g/t silver. The overall process flowsheet is based on a single stage Semi-Autogenous grind (SAG) comminution and conventional Carbon in Leach (CIL) circuit.

Ore will be direct dumped into a Run of Mine (ROM) bin, which will then be fed to a jaw crusher via the primary apron feeder. The crushed rock will be conveyed to a surge bin. The surge bin will discharge via an apron feeder to the SAG mill feed conveyor and overflow to a dead stockpile as required. A front end loader (FEL) will reclaim crushed ore to the SAG mill feed conveyor;

Grinding will be accomplished by a single stage SAG mill in closed circuit with cyclones to achieve the target grind size. The milled product will be thickened in a pre-leach thickener prior to the CIL circuit. A hybrid CIL circuit, consisting of 1 leach tank and 6 adsorption tanks will leach and adsorb gold from the milled ore onto activated carbon;

An Anglo American Research Laboratories (AARL) elution circuit will recover gold from the loaded carbon, and electrowinning and smelting processes will produce doré bar at site. Cyanide in the CIL tailings will be detoxified using the SO2 / air process prior to the tailings being disposed of in the subaerial tailings storage facility. Process water supply for the operations will be supplied by recycled water from the TSF, supplemented by mine dewatering.