In less than two years since acquiring the open-pit gold deposit, G Mining Ventures has the capital to fully fund construction, bringing investors along for the ride with on-demand satellite imagery and virtual site tours.
Mud, sweat, and rain: the last time G Mining Venture’s Senior Vice President, Dušan Petković, was on-site at Tocantinzinho, it was at the peak of the Amazon’s rainy season. He’d been travelling for almost twenty-four hours already, flying from Toronto to Sao Paulo, then connecting to Manaus in northwestern Brazil, before waiting overnight to see if the fog would lift enough to board a nine-seater prop plane for the last leg of the journey. Landing at Tocantinzinho, he was greeted by a downpour.
“When it rains, it gets muddy, and it’s hot and humid, so you’re either soaked from the rain or soaked from sweat,” says Dušan. “It’s the jungle.”
G Mining Ventures (GMIN) thrives in remote locations. Since founding G Mining Services, a privately-owned full-service mining consultancy, in 2006, the principals of the Canadian-based company have completed projects on time and on budget in hard-to-reach Central American regions in Guyana, Suriname and Ecuador, among other places.
“Most of our projects are extremely remote, and lacks access to infrastructure and labour,” Dušan says. “Our experience gives us an advantage.”
So when the opportunity to acquire Tocantinzinho from Eldorado Gold Corp. (ELD) emerged in 2021, Dušan says it checked all the boxes for the environment the team is used to building mines in: high rainfall environment, generally remote, lots of mud, and a mix of skilled and unskilled labour pool.
Tocantinzinho had sat in ELD’s portfolio with little progress for many years. Dušan recognized that the challenge in acquiring it was in convincing the investor community of its potential.
“It’s just human nature to think there’s something wrong with the project,” he says. “I knew I would be asked questions about it, like ‘If it was such a great project, then why didn’t Eldorado keep it? Why didn’t they develop it? What do you see that nobody else sees?’”
Shaking the Historical Perspective
There’s no doubt that the Tocantinzinho site is extremely remote.
“When Eldorado bought this project, it was a dot on the map in the middle of the jungle,” Dušan says.
Much has changed since then. Infrastructure (including a paved highway with an access road that connects to it, which delivers upwards of 500 trucks to the site monthly) has been built to support an industrial complex that sustains 900–1000 workers on rotation with housing and amenities.
To show potential investors how far it had come, Dušan turned to VRIFY.
“VRIFY 360 photos, videos and satellite images paint the picture for investors, enhancing our messages about project progress” he says.
Shortly after acquiring the project, GMIN prepared its feasibility study with plans to leverage VRIFY’s interactive 3D and 360° presentation tools to showcase the document.
“We used VRIFY as a tool to help us raise the capital,” says Dušan.
“So after we announced the feasibility study, we had a big presentation using VRIFY as the platform for all of our investors and prospective investors to see a comparison of what the project was previously, what it looks like now, and the many changes we had implemented.”
The presentation kicked off the project financing process, bringing together the half a billion dollars needed to begin construction.
Bringing the Site Tour Home
In March 2023, GMIN hosted its inaugural site visits for investors and analysts.
Recognizing the trek required to get to the remote location, Dušan had members of VRIFY’s team out to shoot video and imagery content ahead of time so “everyone who couldn’t attend the site visit in person still had the same experience and feel of the place.”
“That was a huge benefit,” Dušan says. “If you couldn’t attend in person, you could essentially conduct your own virtual site tour, see the same things and get a feel for the site.”
Dušan also noticed how the research analysts and investors relied on the photos built through VRIFY’s platform for their reports for investor base and public-facing publishing.
VRIFY allows GMIN to showcase mine progress through interactive and visual content, providing investors with an extra layer of transparency for commitment to keeping the project on track and budget while on its way to commercial production in 2024.
“This is something that I was interested in with VRIFY,” Dušan says.
“Typically, the construction phase is a quiet period. So if I’m providing updates, it’s to the buy side, and previous to VRIFY, there might have been some presentations and photos to share, and that’s it. It would have been photos (when people remember to take pictures) and a PDF file at best.
With VRIFY, I can present construction progress on-the-fly. We can show what the site looked like before and what it looks like a month later, two months, three months later.”
Communicating Sustainability with Impact
Dušan sees communication of sustainability as one of the most significant challenges in mining today.
“There are good, sustainable ways to do this work, and the big push the sector needs is to re-educate people towards this perspective,” he says.
With VRIFY, Dušan can show investors the progress on the power line that will become a public utility once it’s built. It was a conscious decision requiring an additional 40 million raised capital to create a clean energy solution instead of relying on diesel and generators to power the site.
“Most of Brazil is powered by renewable energy sources such as hydro, wind and solar” Dušan says, “so with the power line, we’re bringing clean power to our region, which benefits those communities and generally has a very positive impact on everybody.”
“Platforms like VRIFY allow you to showcase that impact much better than how it was done before.”
Dušan is looking ahead to using VRIFY to show the progress GMIN has committed to revegetation and reforestation in the surrounding regions, where illegal mining operations previously devastated the natural habitat.
“We want to be able to show everyone that we’re a part of this community, and we feel that impact, and we want to give back,” Dušan says.
With immersive 3D visualizations from VRIFY, viewers can take in the depth of the trees and imagine the rain, mud, and sweat one might experience while standing beneath them.
Learn More from G Mining Ventures
What you'll learn
VRIFY News & Updates
Sign up to receive industry insights and updates from VRIFY.