Can you provide an overview of Eldorado Gold’s activities in Québec?

Eldorado has a diverse portfolio of long-life, high-quality assets in Canada, Türkiye and Greece. While the Lamaque underground mine in Val-d'Or is a relatively new mine in our portfolio, it’s been an outstanding acquisition for Eldorado. We acquired Lamaque from Integra Gold Corp in 2017 and reached commercial production less than 2 years later. After three successful years of operations, the mine continues to create value for our shareholders and for the community in Val-d'Or. In February, we released an updated technical study showing an extended mine life with approximately 5.5-years of production from the Upper Triangle reserves, the top portion of the orebody, and another potential approximately 8.5 years of mine life from inferred resources at the Lower Triangle, the deeper portion of the underground mine, and from Ormaque. We made the Ormaque discovery a few years ago, which is situated midway between the Sigma Mill and the Triangle underground mine. Eldorado has already invested in infrastructure that allows us to drill Ormaque from underground to support continued growth at Lamaque.

What has been the most exciting development at Lamaque over the past year?

In December 2021, we completed a decline project or underground ramp from the surface at the Sigma Mill down to the heart of the Upper Triangle underground mine. Previously, we had an underground truck fleet haul the ore to the surface up a spiral ramp and a contractor would bring it to the Sigma Mill. This required roughly 50 truckloads of contract shipments of ore per day on public roads. With our new decline, our trucks now go directly to the mill, thereby eliminating the cost of contract surface haulage, and we have reduced dust, noise, and risk related to road safety on a public road.

Last year, we acquired the exploration company QMX Gold, which increased our property footprint by 5.5 times.

Can you highlight any innovative technologies Eldorado currently employs?

At Lamaque, for example, we can operate a drill or a scoop remotely from the surface that removes people from hazardous areas, making shift changes smoother and enabling some work during the blasting and clearing process.

Looking at current technologies, Eldorado has an e-tagging system that monitors the location of individuals and equipment underground, leading to safety and productivity benefits, such as ventilation on demand. Because mines run 24/7, worker fatigue is a concern on night shifts. Eldorado has a monitoring system that tracks the eye movements of an equipment operator and can predict when fatigue is coming on. The system then sends the operator a wakeup alarm and also sends a message to the dispatch team. On the environmental side, we have implemented a prototype R&D technology called ECOMUD to treat sludge and water generated from drilling activities which recirculates water for surface drilling and allows us to reduce water consumption.

An important benefit of these innovations is that they are shifting the nature of how work gets done. As roles change in the industry, from what’s traditionally been perceived as more physically demanding work to a more technology-enabled industry, this will help our industry be more inclusive and attract a more diverse workforce.

How does your company approach the topic of ESG?

Our sustainability framework and sustainability integrated management system help us to deliver on our commitments of safe, inclusive workplaces, engaged and prosperous communities, responsibly produced products and healthy natural environments. As an example, we believe in the importance of hiring locally and 81% of our employees are from local communities and 99% are from the countries of operation. In Val-d'Or, we focus on partnering with the First Nations communities in proximity and encouraging more women to join our workforce. We are also ambitious with our greenhouse gas targets and have set a target to mitigate our emissions from our global operations by 30% by 2030 on a “business as usual” basis from 2020 levels (equivalent to 65,000 t of carbon dioxide equivalent).