Ecuador copper-gold buildout accelerates
Issued on behalf of Salazar Resources Limited.
An updated technical study just delivered a 121% increase in the after-tax NPV of Ecuador’s next copper mine — and the junior holding a 25% interest, fully carried through to production, is not funding a dollar of the construction.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Aug. 27, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- USA News Group News Commentary — Ecuador was not, until recently, a name that mining investors reached for instinctively. The country had a reputation for political unpredictability, a limited track record of large-scale mine construction, and a regulatory environment that could be generous one year and complicated the next. That narrative has been changing, and changing quickly. Lundin Gold's Fruta del Norte mine — built on schedule, operating at world-class grades, generating substantial free cash flow — demonstrated that a major underground mine could be built responsibly and profitably in the Ecuadorian jungle. Now a third mine — after Fruta del Norte and the Mirador copper mine — is under construction, its economics just received a dramatic independent endorsement, and the junior company holding a fully carried 25% interest in it is quietly sitting at an inflection point that may not stay quiet for long.
Companies mentioned: Salazar Resources Limited (TSXV: SRL) (OTCQB: SRLZF) (FSE: CCG), Silvercorp Metals Inc. (TSX: SVM) (NYSE American: SVM), Lundin Gold Inc. (TSX: LUG) (Nasdaq Stockholm: LUG) (OTCQX: LUGDF), SolGold plc, Auro Metals Inc. (TSXV: AURO) (OTCQB: AURFF)
The Asset: El Domo Under Construction
The Curipamba–El Domo polymetallic project, located in the Bolívar and Los Ríos provinces of Ecuador, is not a study. It is a mine under construction. Silvercorp Metals Inc. (TSX: SVM) (NYSE American: SVM), which holds 75% of the project and serves as the operator, is advancing El Domo toward first commercial concentrate production targeted for mid-2027, with construction fully funded. For Salazar Resources Limited (TSXV: SRL) (OTCQB: SRLZF) (FSE: CCG), which holds the remaining 25% on a fully carried basis through to commercial production, the significance of that timeline is straightforward: without contributing any further development or construction financing, the company is set to become a participant in the cash flows of an operating polymetallic mine within roughly a year.
The deposit is genuinely exceptional in its metal content. El Domo hosts mineralization across copper, gold, zinc, lead, and silver — a combination that makes it one of the more complex and valuable polymetallic systems to enter production in Latin America in recent memory. The updated study features an open-pit mine that will process 666,000 metric tonnes of mineralized material per year over a 13-year mine life, with the ore converted into lead, zinc, and copper concentrates for sale to international smelters.
The Updated Study: A 121% Jump in After-Tax NPV
In July 2026, Salazar Resources disclosed the results of an updated independent NI 43-101 Technical Report prepared by SRK Consulting (China) Ltd. for Silvercorp, the operator, with an effective date of December 31, 2025. The headline number is difficult to ignore: the after-tax net present value of El Domo on a 100% project basis, calculated at an 8% discount rate, came in at US$573 million — a 121% increase compared to the US$259 million NPV delivered by the October 2021 Feasibility Study. At a 5% discount rate, the after-tax NPV rises to US$705.6 million.
The driver behind that improvement is a combination of higher metal price assumptions — gold at US$2,600 per ounce versus US$1,700 in 2021, copper at US$9,250 per tonne versus US$7,716, silver at US$31 per ounce versus US$23 — and a meaningful expansion of the project's Mineral Reserves. Proven and Probable Reserves increased 10% from 6.48 million tonnes to 7.13 million tonnes, with contained metal rising across every payable element: copper up 10% to 137,700 tonnes, gold up 11% to 584,000 ounces, zinc up 16% to 187,700 tonnes, lead up 14% to 18,400 tonnes, and silver up 15% to 11.0 million ounces. Mine life extended by approximately 1.5 operating years relative to the 2021 study. The initial capital cost was revised upward to US$283.7 million from the original US$248 million estimate — a 14% increase that reflects construction cost inflation and the updated scope — but the NPV improvement dwarfs the capital cost revision by a wide margin.
Perhaps equally important for the long-term investment case is what the study leaves on the table. An additional approximately 8 million tonnes of mineralized material remain within the Measured and Indicated and Inferred Mineral Resource categories — material that is not yet classified as Reserves but that represents meaningful potential to extend the mine's operating life and increase future production as the project matures.
The Resource Expansion Behind the Numbers
The updated Mineral Resource estimate, based on 427 diamond drill holes totaling 82,236 metres completed between 2007 and 2024, delivered its own noteworthy improvements. Measured and Indicated Resources grew 27% from 9.0 million tonnes to 11.4 million tonnes, containing 211,600 tonnes of copper, 775,000 ounces of gold, 275,900 tonnes of zinc, 25,200 tonnes of lead, and 15.3 million ounces of silver. The Inferred Resource category expanded dramatically — up 245% from 1.1 million tonnes to 3.8 million tonnes — a result that signals the deposit remains meaningfully open and that the exploration upside Salazar has described in its corporate narrative is beginning to manifest in the resource envelope.
Reported grades for the Mineral Resources are modestly lower than in the 2021 study, which the company and SRK have explained in technical detail: a higher open-pit NSR cut-off value brought additional lower-grade material into the resource at the expense of average grade, while materially higher metal price assumptions caused previously modelled underground material to be incorporated into the open-pit envelope. Crucially, total contained metal increased across all payable metals — a dynamic that matters more than grade dilution when evaluating the economic substance of a resource. The Reserve grades, notably, are unchanged to slightly higher than in the 2021 study, reflecting the quality of the ore that will actually be mined.
What the Carried Interest Actually Means
The structure of Salazar's participation in El Domo is worth understanding precisely, because it is the foundation of the investment case. Salazar holds a 25% interest in the project that is fully carried through to commercial production — meaning Silvercorp, as the operator, funds 100% of the development and construction costs, with Salazar's share of those costs recovered from future production cash flows rather than paid upfront by Salazar. The company has no additional development or construction financing obligations.
For a junior company with a small balance sheet, this structure is genuinely unusual and genuinely valuable. Most junior-to-producing-mine stories involve either a dilutive equity financing to cover a share of development costs, a stream or royalty agreement that gives up future revenue to fund current construction, or a joint-venture partner buy-out. Salazar's carried interest eliminates all three of those value leakages. When El Domo reaches commercial production, Salazar simply begins receiving 25% of cash flows from a fully-funded, fully-constructed mine — one with an independently validated after-tax NPV of US$573 million at an 8% discount rate.
CEO Fredy Salazar framed it succinctly in the company's July release: with construction on track and first production expected in 2027, El Domo is transitioning from study to cash generation, and through the fully carried 25% interest, shareholders gain exposure to a producing copper-gold asset without further development funding.
Ecuador's Mining Landscape: The Context Investors Are Watching
Salazar Resources sits within an Ecuador mining sector that is undergoing a fundamental transformation, driven by a combination of large-scale capital deployment, jurisdictional improvement, and world-class discovery. The context provided by the other major players in the country illustrates both where El Domo fits in the production timeline and the depth of institutional confidence in Ecuador as a mining destination.
Silvercorp Metals Inc. (TSX: SVM) (NYSE American: SVM) is not merely a comp — it is the operator of El Domo and the controlling partner whose execution will determine whether the mid-2027 production target is met. Silvercorp is a well-established, cash-generating producer with operating mines in China and a growing international development portfolio. The company reported record Q4 Fiscal 2026 revenue of approximately US$147.4 million, a 96% increase over the prior year, and ended the period with substantial liquidity. The El Domo construction budget was updated to US$284 million in early 2026, with commercial production targeted for July 1, 2027. Silvercorp's financial strength and operational track record are the primary risk mitigants for the El Domo construction timeline and are core to evaluating the credibility of Salazar's near-term cash flow story.
Lundin Gold Inc. (TSX: LUG) (Nasdaq Stockholm: LUG) (OTCQX: LUGDF) is the producing gold mine in Ecuador that rewrote the country's investment narrative. Salazar Resources’ founder and CEO, Fredy Salazar was involved in this world-class discovery during the early days. Its Fruta del Norte gold mine in southeast Ecuador has been operating since late 2019 and ranks among the highest-grade operating gold mines in the world, with Probable Reserves of 4.92 million ounces at an average grade of 8.7 g/t gold. In Q1 2026, Fruta del Norte produced 119,742 ounces of gold at an average throughput of 5,520 tonnes per day — a quarterly record — at an average realized gold price of approximately US$4,951 per ounce. Lundin Gold's 2026 guidance of 475,000 to 525,000 ounces is supported by the company's largest-ever US$85 million exploration program. As the operational proof-of-concept for large-scale underground mining in Ecuador, Fruta del Norte is the benchmark against which every Ecuadorian development story is measured — and El Domo's construction timeline reflects the lessons Silvercorp and the broader industry have drawn from Lundin's experience in-country.
SolGold plc represents the large-scale, next-generation copper-gold development story in Ecuador. Its Cascabel project in northern Ecuador — now advancing under the strategic influence of Jiangxi Copper following a takeover that valued SolGold at approximately £1.13 billion — hosts one of the world's largest undeveloped copper-gold porphyry systems, with a post-tax NPV of US$3.2 billion at a copper price of US$3.85 per pound and a 28-year initial mine life. Early works at Cascabel were targeted to begin in 2026, with open-pit production from the Tandayama-América deposit planned for January 2028. SolGold illustrates the tier-one scale of copper-gold endowment that Ecuador's Andean geological belt can host — and the level of institutional capital, including a Chinese state-owned mining company, that the country's mineral potential is now attracting.
Auro Metals Inc. (TSXV: AURO) (OTCQB: AURFF) — previously named Tincorp Metals — is the newest entrant in the Ecuador copper-gold story, focused on its wholly owned Santa Barbara Gold-Copper Project in the Zamora Copper-Gold Belt of southeastern Ecuador. Santa Barbara, acquired from Silvercorp in May 2026, hosts a large-scale porphyry system with Indicated resources of 29.8 million tonnes grading 0.73 g/t gold and 0.10% copper, and an Inferred Resource of 205.7 million tonnes at 0.52 g/t gold and 0.09% copper. A Phase 1 drill program of 10,000 metres is currently underway, with the first three drill holes having recently returned assay results. Auro underscores Ecuador's emergence as a multi-district copper-gold destination with a growing population of junior developers and demonstrates that Silvercorp itself — through the sale of Santa Barbara to Auro — is recycling Ecuadorian assets to fund its focus on bringing El Domo into production. These companies are referenced to illustrate the sector and do not imply any partnership, endorsement, affiliation, or comparable financial performance; they differ substantially in size, stage, jurisdiction, and asset type.
The Risks Worth Understanding
The investment case for Salazar Resources rests substantially on a single asset — its 25% carried interest in El Domo — and that concentration is the primary risk investors should weigh. Any delay, cost overrun, technical difficulty, or operational problem at El Domo during the remaining construction period would affect Salazar disproportionately. The revised construction budget of US$283.7 million includes a contingency allocation, but mining construction budgets have a long history of being insufficient, and the 14% increase from the 2021 estimate to the 2025 update illustrates the direction of that risk. The mid-2027 production date is a target, not a guarantee.
The economic analysis in the 2025 Technical Report is not a new Feasibility Study — it is an update to the 2021 study using revised resource estimates and updated metal price assumptions. The NPV improvement is significant, but it is based on metal prices that reflect the current elevated commodity environment; if copper, gold, zinc, or silver prices decline materially from the assumed levels, the economics weaken accordingly. Ecuador's political and regulatory environment has improved under the current government, but it remains a jurisdiction that carries country risk — changes in tax rates, royalties, permitting requirements, or community relations can affect operating economics and timelines. Silvercorp, as the operator, may face challenges with VAT recovery, logistics, and labor that are difficult to predict from the outside. And Salazar, as a junior holding company with limited revenue until El Domo achieves commercial production, will require access to capital markets to fund its own corporate overhead and its 100%-owned exploration portfolio in the interim. Investors should evaluate the genuine strength of the carried-interest structure and the updated project economics against these meaningful risks.
The 100%-owned exploration portfolio, including the tungsten-silver result at Pijilí, is at an early stage. No mineral resource has been estimated on any of these projects. The Pijilí result derives from a re-interpretation of historical drill data rather than from new drilling, it reflects a single two-metre interval in one drill hole, and there is no assurance that any follow-up work will confirm the extent or continuity of the mineralization described or that such work will be undertaken on any particular timetable.
Why the Next Twelve Months Matter
For most junior mining companies with a project under development by a major partner, the story is about waiting. For Salazar Resources, the next twelve months are not waiting — they are the finish line. El Domo is under construction, fully funded, with a production target in mid-2027. The independent technical update that just doubled the project's after-tax NPV arrived not as a preliminary study but as a report covering a mine already being built. The resource expansion it documents — a 27% increase in Measured and Indicated tonnes and a 245% increase in Inferred tonnes — points to an asset that has not yet revealed the full extent of its mineral endowment, with 8 million additional tonnes of mineralized material sitting outside the current Reserve envelope as a source of mine-life extension potential.
Salazar also disclosed in early 2026 that it had consolidated 100% ownership of the Santiago, Pijilí, and Tarqui-Quimi exploration projects — acquired from Silvercorp in exchange for a 1.5% NSR royalty — giving the company a portfolio of 100%-owned copper-gold exploration targets in Ecuador alongside the El Domo carried interest. For investors willing to look beyond the production start date, those exploration assets represent a second layer of potential value that the market has not yet been asked to price. After participating of Lundin Gold’s FDN and El Domo discovery Salazar is one of the best positioned groups to hit again.
That second layer now has a number attached to it. In August 2026, Salazar reported that a re-interpretation of historical drill data from the Mercy concession at Pijilí had identified a 2.00 metre sub-interval in hole MERC-011 grading 1.80% tungsten — equivalent to 2.27% WO3, the unit in which tungsten deposits are conventionally reported — together with 740 g/t silver and 0.63% copper, within a previously disclosed 18.55 metre zone. For scale, the United States Geological Survey’s grade and tonnage model for tungsten skarn deposits, covering 41 deposits worldwide, reports a median grade of 0.44% WO3; that figure is a deposit-scale median and is not directly comparable to a single 2.00 metre drill intersection. Copper, silver and tungsten are all listed on the United States’ 2025 Critical Minerals List. The assays formed part of the original drilling programme and were not re-assayed by Salazar; the sub-interval had not previously been reported as a separate composite. No mineral resource has been estimated at Pijilí and the company has made no assessment of the economic potential of this mineralization. What the result does establish is that Salazar’s ground carries metals its earlier programmes were not designed to look for, and the company has said it is re-examining multi-element data it already holds across the rest of the 100%-owned portfolio on that basis.
The transformation of Ecuador from a mining-skeptic jurisdiction to one where a third major mine is being built, this one polymetallic, a world-class gold mine is producing at record throughput, and the world's largest copper-gold porphyry developer has attracted a Chinese state-owned miner as a buyer — that transformation is one of the cleaner macro tailwinds in junior mining today. And within it, Salazar Resources holds a position that a much larger company would envy: a fully carried 25% interest in the next mine to come online, backed by an updated economic study that just delivered the most dramatic NPV upgrade the project has seen.
CONTINUED… Learn more about Salazar Resources Limited at: https://salazarresources.com
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SOURCE: USA News Group
SOURCES:
[1] Salazar Resources Limited — News Release: Updated Mineral Resources, Mineral Reserves and Enhanced Project Economics for the Curipamba–El Domo Project, Ecuador (July 15, 2026; primary source for all El Domo economic data, reserve and resource figures, mine life, construction status, CEO quote, and carried-interest structure):
[2] Salazar Resources Limited — "Salazar Resources Consolidates Ecuador Copper-Gold Portfolio While Maintaining 25% Carried Interest in the El Domo Mine" (March 18, 2026; acquisition of Santiago, Pijilí, and Tarqui-Quimi from Silvercorp in exchange for 1.5% NSR; exploration portfolio consolidation):
[3] Silvercorp Metals Inc. — El Domo construction budget update (February 4, 2026; US$284M budget, production target July 1, 2027, six-month delay; Q4 FY2026 record revenue ~US$147.4M, +96% YoY; TSX/NYSE American: SVM).
[4] Lundin Gold Inc. — Q1 2026 production results (119,742 oz gold; 5,520 tpd throughput — quarterly record; avg. realized price ~US$4,951/oz; 2026 guidance 475,000–525,000 oz; US$85M exploration program; TSX: LUG, Nasdaq Stockholm: LUG, OTCQX: LUGDF):
https://lundingold.com/news/lundin-gold-provides-2026-guidance-and-strategic-t-122826/
[5] SolGold plc — Jiangxi Copper acquisition (values SolGold at ~£1.13B); Cascabel early works 2026, open-pit production 2028 target; post-tax NPV US$3.2B at US$3.85/lb Cu; 28-year mine life; TSX delisting voluntary:
[6] Auro Metals Inc. (formerly Tincorp Metals) — Santa Barbara Gold-Copper Project acquisition completed May 13, 2026; Indicated 29.8Mt at 0.73 g/t Au / 0.10% Cu, Inferred 205.7Mt at 0.52 g/t Au / 0.09% Cu; Phase 1 10,000m drill program underway; first three holes assayed June 2026; TSXV: AURO, OTCQB: AURFF.
[7] Salazar Resources Limited — News Release: tungsten-silver interval reported from re-interpretation of historical drill data at the Pijilí Project, Mercy concession, drill hole MERC-011 ([DATE] 2026; primary source for all tungsten, silver and copper grades, the WO3 conversion, the critical-minerals listing reference, and the absence of any mineral resource estimate at Pijilí).
[8] Green, C.J., Lederer, G.W., Parks, H.L., and Zientek, M.L., 2020, Grade and tonnage model for tungsten skarn deposits—2020 update: U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2020–5085 (source for the 0.44% WO3 median grade across 41 tungsten skarn deposits worldwide).
https://www.juniorminingnetwork.com/mining-topics/topic/ecuador.html
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Qualified Person and Technical Disclosure. The scientific and technical information in this article concerning the Curipamba–El Domo project is derived from disclosure by Salazar Resources Limited and from the independent NI 43-101 technical report prepared by SRK Consulting (China) Ltd. for Silvercorp Metals Inc., effective December 31, 2025. Mr. Falong Hu (FAusIMM), a qualified person under NI 43-101 who is independent of Salazar, reviewed and approved the scientific and technical disclosure in the company’s news release. Market Equities has not independently verified, and is not qualified to verify, the company’s scientific or technical disclosure; readers should refer to the company’s filed technical report and news releases for the complete data, assumptions, and qualified-person statements.
Cautionary Note Regarding the Technical Report and Project Economics. The Curipamba–El Domo project is under construction and is not in production; Salazar holds a 25% carried interest and does not operate the project. The net present value, resource and reserve estimates, grades, mine life, production timing, and metal-price assumptions described are estimates drawn from a technical report and do not represent realized results or cash flow; there is no certainty they will be achieved. Comparisons of Salazar’s market capitalization to a percentage of project NPV are illustrative arithmetic only and are not a valuation of Salazar or its carried interest, nor a price target. Mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability, and inferred mineral resources are too speculative geologically to have economic considerations applied to them. Statements regarding first production in 2027, additional mineralized material, potential mine-life extension, future cash flow, and the entry into force of the Canada-Ecuador free trade agreement are forward-looking and subject to construction, permitting, operating, commodity-price, and jurisdictional risks in Ecuador. References to other companies, including Silvercorp Metals, Lundin Mining, Southern Copper, Solaris Resources, Freeport-McMoRan, Ero Copper, and Atico Mining, are for market and sector context only; those companies differ substantially from Salazar in size, stage, and structure, are not peers, competitors, or comparables, and their performance is not indicative of Salazar’s prospects. Silvercorp Metals is the operator and 75% owner of the El Domo project and is therefore a related party to the project rather than an independent comparable. All third-party figures are approximate and subject to change. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties; readers should not place undue reliance on them.
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