Canadian Mining Company in Nicaragua Confirms Merger
Calibre Mining Co., which operates mines in La Libertad and Leon, has announced its merger with the likewise Canadian company Equinox Gold. Meanwhile, the Nicaraguan government continues offering mining rights to Chinese companies.
By Ivan Olivares (Confidencial)
HAVANA TIMES – The transnational mining company Calibre Mining, with offices in Canada, the US and Nicaragua, has signed an agreement with Equinox Gold, to combine their mining operations and thus form the second largest mining company in Canada, according to the scope of their joint investments.
The Calibre company currently operates the El Limon mine in Nicaragua through the subsidiary company Triton Minera (Mina El Limón); and the La Libertad Mine through the company Desarrollo Minero de Nicaragua, S. A. (Desminic; Mina La Libertad).
The new company will be named New Equinox Gold, but will continue to operate under the name Equinox Gold Corporation.
The two merged companies – both Canadian-owned – are headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. With this decision, they will generate a combined production of 950,000 ounces of gold in 2025, not including two other mines that are currently under development and expected to generate some 590,000 ounces of gold when operating at full capacity.
Last January 29, Darren Hall, Calibre’s president and CEO, announced jubilantly that Calibre had “achieved a significant milestone with the production of our one millionth ounce of gold in Nicaragua since our production efforts began in the fourth quarter of 2019.”
In total, gold exports generated revenues of US$1.354 billion in 2024, according to the Foreign Trade Report, Q4 2024, prepared by the Central Bank of Nicaragua (BCN).
A professional from the mining industry told Confidencial under cover of anonymity that the announced merger shouldn’t bring any changes to the company’s day-to-day operations in the offices or in the extraction zones. “It all continues to function normally,” he assured.
In 2023, Calibre’s activity in Nicaragua produced 242,109 ounces of gold. In 2024, production fell by 34,889 ounces (14.4%), to close at 207,220 ounces, according to their 2024 financial and operating report.
The combined sales of the 242,452 ounces extracted from the mines that the company owns in Nevada (United States) and Nicaragua, generated 574.4 million dollars in income from the sale of gold, at an average price of US $2,369 dollars per ounce. The increase in the price of gold – which on Monday, February 24, reached a record of $2,954.4 dollars, according to information published by the Central Bank of Costa Rica- augurs huge profits for companies in this sector.
Chinese companies likely beneficiaries of new concessions
The staggering current price of gold may help explain the feverish pace of new mining concessions being awarded in Nicaragua, especially to Chinese mining companies. It may also explain the cancellation of some older contracts for mines that were never developed. Many of those mining concessions threaten the indigenous communities of the Caribbean Coast and are a matter of concern to activists working to defend the environment.
In the period between October 2023 and April 2024, thirteen mining concessions were awarded to three Chinese companies. The total area of these 13 lots of land represented 11.66% of the total extension in hectares awarded for metallic mining in Nicaragua, according to a Confidencial analysis of official data from Nicaragua’s Ministry of Energy and Mines.
Exiled Nicaraguan environmentalist Amaru Ruiz, president of the outlawed and confiscated Fundacion del Rio, stated that the cancellations are part of a “clean-up process” to order the territories and “have [the plots] ready” to be awarded as new concessions. He warned that through this apparently “simple process of organization, they’re cleaning up those contracts that weren’t exploited to make room for new companies.”
Ruiz considers it “an arbitrary decision” to take away from the companies that were previously awarded concessions “their rights to these concessions and then award them to others.” He admitted that the process is difficult to confirm, because those affected “don’t denounce their situation” for fear of reprisals from the regime.
Many of the new concession are being arranged in a great rush, as occurred at the end of July 2023, when in a little less than 48 hours, the regional councils from both the North and South Caribbean Coast Regions approved a series of concessions totaling over 240,000 hectares to the Canadian-based Calibre Mining Company and the Zhong Fu Development Co., founded in China.
Those concessions sparked concern among environmental leaders and indigenous communities, both of which warned that these mining concessions not only represent a threat to the environment but also further the existing violent invasion of armed colonists into the indigenous territories.
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.