French company Rexma Participacions (REXMA) will be operating the mine on the property held by Romanex Guyana Exploration Limited. Shoreham Resources Limited, a Canadian exploration company dedicated to the exploration of advanced precious metal and polymetallic deposits in South America and Canada, has the right to earn a 75% working interest in the Marudi Mountain property by exercising an option to acquire 75% of the shares of Romanex (holder of 100% of the project). Romanex is owned by Vanessa Ventures Inc. (now Infinito Gold Corp).
“The company is very pleased to confirm that REXMA is fully committed to begin alluvial mining and gold production at our Marudi Mountain Gold Project by February 1, 2010”, David Bending, President and CEO of Shoreham, said in a press statement. The original agreement envisaged commencing sustained alluvial production at a rate of 500 cubic meters per day commencing last July 1.
Shoreham must invest a total of US$4M in the project by March 2011 in order to acquire its 75% interest. The company’s expenditures to date significantly exceed the requirements of the agreement and it expects to meet its vesting requirements ahead of schedule, the statement asserted.
On August 21 last year, Shoreham and REXMA, an alluvial mine operator based in Lyon, France signed a Definitive Agreement entitled “Project Operating Plans and Principles – Marudi Mountain Alluvial Mining Agreement”. This original agreement envisaged commencing sustained alluvial production at a rate of 500 cubic meters per day commencing July 1, 2009 with an ultimate target rate of 2,000 cubic meters per day. In a release on January 27 this year, Shoreham realized that additional environmental studies would be required in order for REXMA to begin production and granted REXMA a three-month extension to their production start-up and other milestone deadlines.
“Delays in the granting of the Mining Licence, the need for undertaking additional Environmental Impact Studies and Reports, Community Relations Meetings, Baseline Environmental Studies and the granting of duty-free importation licences have hampered REXMA’s ability to perform and meet the revised milestones defined in the Operating Agreement”, the statement said.
It said that Shoreham recognizes that the conditions responsible for REXMA’s failure to meet the defined goals were beyond REXMA’s control and on October 26 Shoreham issued REXMA an addendum to the Agreement which provided REXMA with an additional three-month extension to meet the milestone production dates.
“REXMA is now to be in production by February 1, 2010 at a minimum sustained production rate of 125,000 cubic meters per year and increasing their plant capacity to 200,000 cubic meters per year by January 1, 2011 and further increasing operations to at least 300,000 cubic meters per year prior to January 1, 2012. All of REXMA’s production and processing equipment is ready for shipment from Cayenne in French Guiana. REXMA is anxiously awaiting final importation documentation so that they can begin plant construction”, the statement declared.
It noted that REXMA will be responsible for all of its costs, will be required to pay Shoreham an agreed upon monthly sum for Shoreham’s Guyanese overhead, office and support costs, pay all royalties to the Guyanese government and underlying royalty holders and will pay a gross production royalty of 10% to Romanex 100% of which monies Shoreham has the right to use to support its own exploration on the Marudi property.
