Management says historical development on the Mariana vein produced grades akin to those exposed in the Santa Barbara exploration development.

Aguia Resources executive chairman Warwick Grigor said: “Aguia’s Santa Barbara gold project is expected to recommence with underground exploration and development in the fourth quarter of this year. It is the Company’s aim to continue with the development activities and to replicate the achievements from the earlier trial mining phase where Baroyeca reported impressive high-grade recoveries of gold.”

The company’s flagship project – the Tres Estrades phosphate deposit – lies nearly 3000km to the south-east in southern Brazil. The phosphate project is similarly advanced and also requires only a modest capital expenditure to get it into production after being bogged down in legal wranglings for the past two years because of what management says are bogus environmental activist claims.

Aguia now plans on sidestepping its legal battle woes by leasing a potentially available processing plant just 100km from the project, which could see Tres Estrades in production by the middle of next year.

A bankable feasibility study conducted on Tres Estrades by the company in March last year concluded that by producing 300,000 tonnes per annum during an 18-year mine life, with capital expenditure of $26 million, the project would spit out $22 million a year in EBITDA. The payback period is anticipated to be 2.9 years on the back of a 54.7 per cent internal rate of return (IRR) that could easily be reduced by through leasing of the nearby processing plant in favour of capital-intensive construction.

Aguia says the new plan is to deliver strong early cash flow from its high-grade Santa Barbara gold mine in Columbia to provide much of the cash needed to fire up its organic phosphate operations in Brazil.

Currently, southern Brazil meets its phosphate demand entirely from imports, mainly from Morocco, at long-term contract pricing of about $400 per tonne. With gold currently at all-time highs and production in Columbia slated for next year’s first quarter, Aguia could boast two producing South American assets in premium qualities by the middle of 2025.

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