Yamana Gold increases reserve grade at Jacobina mine in Brazil

Yamana Gold has issued a positive update to its mid-year mineral reserve and mineral resource estimates for Brazil’s Jacobina mine of 2.28mn ounces of gold.

In addition to that 8.6% increase over year-end 2018, Yamana announced that Jacobina’s mineral reserve grade increased for a consecutive year by 2.6% to 2.4 grammes per tonne. Meanwhile, from year-end 2017, overall grade has increased by 5.3%.

The company believes Jacobina is on the verge of becoming a “world class” operation, also providing an exploration update demonstrating strong growth in total contained and future potential ounces. The Canavieiras and Morro do Vento areas have yielded excellent new drill intercepts and are expected to continue providing new resources at higher than life-of-mine grades.

The João Belo Sur area has also demonstrated excellent potential for long-term mineral resource growth immediately adjacent to the existing João Belo mine, historically the most important producer at Jacobina.

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The improvement in mineral reserves and reserve grade in the mid-year updated mineral reserves at Jacobina supports annual gold production above the 170,000 ounces as previously guided after the completion of Phase 1 and further supports the potential of Phase 2, which would see production increase above 225,000 ounces per year.

Jacobina has a strong track record of mineral reserves replacement with the rate of replacement exceeding the rate of depletion by more than three times. New mineral reserve additions are at an average grade of 2.86 g/t and are resulting in higher quality additions to mineral reserve ounces than the ounces being depleted from production. New mineral reserves are the result of infill drilling, contributing 36% of the new mineral reserve ounces, and the remaining 64% as a result of modelling additional reefs.

Yamana Gold is a Canadian-based precious metals producer with significant gold and silver production, development stage properties, exploration properties, and land positions throughout the Americas, including Canada, Brazil, Chile and Argentina.