Mining Journal is remarkably bullish on the Ilovitza project in Macedonia.  John C. Menzies, CEO of Cmi Capital Limited was previously the CEO of Euromax and built the company and its exploration assets over an 8 year period.

The Ilovitza mine is planned for the back of the large bald mountain behind the villages of Ilovitza and Stuka in Macedonia\n\n\”Multi-billion-dollar returns from a world class gold-copper resource are usually the preserve of mining’s majors, not a minnow. But they are exactly what investors in Euromax Resources (TSX: EOX) have to look forward to from the US$475 million Ilovica project in Macedonia, which is ready to move forward in what president and CEO Steve Sharpe describes as an ideal environment for building major new mining projects.\n\n“This is exactly the time to be building a copper-gold mine of this size because the amount of chits that are being offered to us now in terms of major capital items that would normally be the long lead stuff,” he says. “The offers are coming from mining companies, from suppliers that have cancelled orders, and this is all brand new equipment at a fraction of the retail price or list price. So I expect to see some fairly chunky capex and operational savings.”

Production is slated at 83,000 oz pa of gold and 16,000tpa of copper, starting in 2018, with overall average process recoveries at 83.3% for gold and 81.3% for copper”.

Ilovitza is a Tertiary porphyry copper-gold deposit and is ideally situated for development being close to services, water and infrastructure.  The measured and indicated resources total 250 million tonnes containing 2.6 M ounces of gold and  550,000 tonnes of copper.   While the grade is low, the low stripping ratio, low infrastructure capital and operating costs and proximity to rail and smelters reports an attractive NPV and IRR in the feasibility study.