Cerro Moro is a gold-silver operation located in the Santa Cruz province of Argentina approximately 70 kilometres south of the port city of Puerto Deseado. The Company acquired the operation in 2012 when it completed the acquisition of Extorre Gold Mines. Cerro Moro entered production in 2018, making it Yamana’s newest mine.

The life of mine, based only on mineral reserves, consists of an integrated operation from open pits and underground stopes, and indicates mining for a total period of five years, with a throughput of 1,000 tonnes per day. Exploration and engineering studies are ongoing with an objective to extend the life of the operation, with a strategic mine life objective of 10 years.

Cerro Moro has a significant inventory of lower-grade veins that are not fully reflected in the current mineral reserves and mineral resource statements, many of which are wider than the veins currently being mined. Drilling of these lower grade veins was not typically followed up with infill drilling in the past as the mineralization is below the current cut-off grade. Cerro Moro was developed as a high grade, low tonnage operation but, from the beginning, the Company has considered alternative processing options to allow for economic extraction of lower grade mineralization, including:

• a scalable plant, where the front-end of the plant anticipates higher 2,000 tpd tonnage, with the expectation of modest capital requirement to achieve this objective,
• heap leaching near surface, lower-grade material, to supplement other production.

The objective at Cerro Moro is to create a sustainable ten-years of production of at least 160,000 gold GEO⁽³⁾ per year, and up to 200,000 GEO⁽³⁾ per year. If the Company successfully develops both the plant expansion and heap leach projects, which represent significant upside opportunities, along with conversion of the exploration targets to mineral resources, Cerro Moro could produce at least 200,000 GEO⁽³⁾ per year. This upside would be beyond the current ten-year outlook that assumes Cerro Moro as a 150,000 to 165,000 GEO⁽³⁾ per year operation, which is expected to be sustainable from mineral reserves mine life, ongoing exploration successes and mineral reserve replacement

Please see the press release published February 8, 2022, for the most recent exploration update for Cerro Moro.

Please click here to view the latest technical report for Cerro Moro.

Please refer to Mineral Reserves & Resources for complete information relating to mineral reserves and mineral resources indicating tonnage and grade for the various mines and projects.