Dundee Precious Metals gets construction permit for Krumovgrad

It’s been a long road with a few twists and turns along the way, but Dundee Precious Metals (TSX: DPM) has finally received a construction permit to build an open pit mine at its Krumovgrad project in Bulgaria. “This is the last one – there are no other permits that are part of the critical path for the project that are needed,” Rick Howes, Dundee’s president and CEO tells The Northern Miner. “We have got lots of support now from the government and the local community and as a foreign investor that’s sometimes hard to do.” The company had submitted an earlier version of the project for approval but halted the permitting process so that it could take local preferences into account. In its redesign, for example, it took cyanide out of the process (“it has strong opposition in that part of the world, particularly in Eastern Europe”). It also replaced a planned wet tailings dam with a dry tailings facility instead, and reduced the project’s footprint from 145 hectares to 85 hectares. Dundee then re-submitted the project for permitting and received approval of its environmental impact assessment in early 2013. Construction should start in about a month, subject to board approval, and the first concentrate should be produced some time in the third quarter of 2018, with commercial production following in early 2019. Read the entire story at www.NorthernMiner.com/news/dundee-precious-metals