Could you introduce Denarius Metals?

Denarius is the “son” of Gran Colombia Gold (GCG), now Aris Mining, one of Colombia’s largest gold producers. While GCG focused on precious metals, we launched Denarius four years ago to diversify into copper and other critical minerals. We acquired a project on the Iberian Pyrite Belt in Spain, one of the least developed belts in the world, with incredible polymetallic opportunities at high grades. Around the same time, we picked up Zancudo, an orphaned asset formerly held in an arrangement between IAMGOLD (70%) and GCG (30%), located on Colombia’s Cauca Belt.

Today, Denarius fully owns the Zancudo gold-silver mine and holds a portfolio of assets in Spain with exposure to nickel, copper, cobalt, zinc, lead, platinum, palladium, gold and silver. Both Zancudo in Colombia and Aguablanca in Spain are slated to enter production in 2025. By next year, at current prices, we expect to generate around US$45 million in free cash flow from Zancudo and another US$5 million from our share of Aguablanca in Spain.

Denarius has just started production at Zancudo. Could you familiarize our readers with the asset?

 Zancudo is probably the most famous mine in Colombia, since it is the mine that earned Colombia's independence from the Spaniards. At one point, it functioned as a central bank, with paper money backed by physical gold from the mine. According to existing records, Zancundo was in production until the 1940s. 

Denarius officially started production in April 2025. While IAMGOLD envisioned a large-scale, low-grade, open-pit facility, we opted for an underground development, redesigning the mining plan for a much leaner, higher-grade output. Our guidance will be between 50,000 and 75,000 oz/y at an AISC at current prices of about US$1,700/oz.

What is the upside at Zancudo, both on the mining and processing side?

Based on the 40,000 meters of historic drilling, we defined 1 million oz in resources (AuEq), of which 860,000 oz is gold and the remaining is silver. Over the past two years, we finalized the environmental and mining permits, and we are adding a 1,000 t/d brand-new plant, incrementing our capacity from the original 500 t/d existing crushing facility. The project is starting at about 100 t/d, and will gradually ramp up to 500 t/d by the end of 2025 and 1,000 t/d by the end of 2026 – that will leave us with spare capacity of 500 t/d, giving us room to increase production in the coming years. 

Only 20% of the concession has been drilled with the current 1 million oz resource in place, so the upside potential for a multi-million-ounce operation is unquestionable.

And what is the current status of the new processing plant?

The new 1,000 tpd plant was delivered six months ago. We're wrapping up the structural work now, aiming to complete assembly over the summer and start producing concentrate by December. We have an offtake agreement with Trafigura, which includes a prepayment of nearly US$9 million, so construction is fully financed. Until the plant is operational, we’ll mine, crush, and sell the material to a Trafigura.

Could you walk us through your consolidation strategy in Spain, following the recent acquisition of Aguablanca?

Our main project in Spain is Lomero-Poyatos, which has an M&I resource of 11 MT of mostly gold, zinc, lead, silver, and copper. At close to 1 Moz in gold, and with high copper and zinc grades, it can be called a gold mine with copper and polymetallic elements. We bought in to 21% of an existing plant called Aguablanca, with an option to go to 50%. Two strategic reasons drove this acquisition: First, Aguablanca gives us 5 MT of reserves (Ni, Cu, Co, Pt, Pd, Au) underground, and a near-term production opportunity; previously operated by Lundin Mining until 2016, we are looking to re-start the mine by the end of 2025 and sell nickel-copper concentrates (with cobalt, platinum, and palladium byproducts) to Boliden Commercial. The second aspect that attracted us to Aguablanca is its 5,000 tpd plant, half of which is spare capacity. This gives us a tremendous opportunity to use this 50% capacity to process material from Lomero-Poyatos, which sits just 88km away from Aguablanca, all on highways without tolls. The plant is as such that we can actually produce different concentrates: a nickel-copper concentrate on one line, and another line with three types of concentrates, namely a copper-gold and lead; zinc-gold concentrate, and with what is left, a very rich pyrite concentrate with about 1.5 g in locked gold. At Lomero-Poyatos, we can mine about 1MT/year of material, with close to 3% gold, almost 1% copper, and 2% zinc, while Aguablanca gives us seven years of mine life – LOM, we believe we can actually double. The plant has been on care and maintenance for seven years, but it is in near-perfect condition, so we have started dewatering and a US$5 million refurbishment process. Aguablanca is not just a strategic asset for us - it’s strategic for Europe. The EU recently designated it as such. By late 2025, Denarius will be the only other active producer in the Andalusia-Extremadura region.

What’s driving Europe - and the rest of the world - to refocus on mining?

The industrial revolution in the 1800s reshaped the world, and mining was at its core. Now, we’re entering a new industrial era that’s transforming how we travel, produce, and consume energy. For a while, environmental concerns tarnished mining’s image, making us forget that without minerals, we’d slide back into the Stone Age. And ironically, even back then, we were mining.