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Minera Alamos (TSXV: MAI) is already planning for the possible growth of its Santana gold project in northwestern Mexico.

In a press release, the company announced that it has entered into a $1.2-million equipment purchase agreement with Mako Mining, Marlin Gold Mining and Oro Gold de Mexico to acquire a complete crushing, screening and agglomeration system.

Located in Sonora, Santana is an open-pit, heap-leach development permitted project with test mining and processing recently completed

“This agreement leverages the financial flexibility provided by our relationship with Osisko Gold Royalties to take advantage of a unique opportunity that presented itself and that will significantly reduce longer-term capital and operating costs for the development of the Santana project,” Darren Koningen, Minera Alamos CEO, said in a media statement. “The acquisition for this excellent collection of equipment is a small fraction of the original purchase cost and underscores our philosophy of finding innovative ways to build our projects with some of the industry’s lowest capital intensity.”

The 300-tph crushing system was originally installed at Mako’s La Trinidad gold heap leach operation and was in commercial service for a relatively short period until it was shut down in 2019.

Alamos said it is planning to start initial operations at Santana using contractor portable crushing equipment until optimal crushing strategies are better understood.

In the miner’s view, the new system will allow it to transition to a larger capacity crushing operation capable of accommodating future plans for significant increases in the production profile at Santana as the overall scale of the project increases through ongoing exploration.

“Such a move towards an in-house (non-contractor) crushing system will be significantly less costly as a result of the purchase of the system and is expected to yield significant savings in crushing unit costs,” Koningen said.