Mineração Aurizona S.A. (MASA) is the wholly owned Brazilian business subsidiary of Luna Gold Corp. that operates all mining, project development and exploration activities in the state of Maranhão, Brazil. Approximately 730 local people from the surrounding communities are employed by MASA.
The Aurizona Project is located within the São Luis Craton and is accessible year round by roads from the capital cities of Belém (400 km), Pará and Sao Luis (320 km), Maranhão. The mine and surrounding communities are also accessible by air charter.
Commercial production was achieved in February of 2011. In 2012, Aurizona produced more than 74,000 ounces of gold. The mine is currently undergoing Phase I of its expansion. Upon completion, this expansion is expected to facilitate 100,000 ounces of production in 2013 and 125,000 ounces in 2014.
The ore feed comes from an NI 43-101 compliant Measured and Indicated resource totaling 78.0 million tonnes at 1.26 g/t Au at the 3.3 kilometer long Piaba orogenic gold deposit. Ten near mine targets have been identified to date within a five kilometer radius of the mine.
Open pit mining is currently underway in the center of the Piaba deposit consisting of a combination of owner operated and contracted equipment. During 2012, the mine completed the transition to a fully owned and operated fleet consisting of twelve (12) CAT740B articulated dump trucks and three (3) CAT 374 excavators plus ancillary support equipment.
Once the Phase I expansion has been completed, the plant throughput is expected to increase to process saprolite and laterite ores grading at a rate of 10,000 ore tonnes per day and will consist of the following circuits: ore receiving, grinding, intense leach reactor, pre-leach thickening, carbon in leach (CIL), gold elution, carbon acid washing, gold electrowinning, induction fusion furnace, tailings thickening, and neutralization of tailings pulp.
