Positive Technical Report And Strategic Process For Santo Domingo

VANCOUVER - Capstone Mining Corp. announced positive results of an updated Technical Report for its Santo Domingo Iron Oxide-Copper-Gold (IOCG) project in Region III, Chile and announces the start of a strategic process for the Project. The strategic process will explore several alternatives, including selling a portion of the Project. Santo Domingo is owned 70% by Capstone and 30% by Korea Resources Corporation (KORES). The Technical Report updates project economics, which benefits from significantly lower power costs and several engineering changes, including the use of desalinated water in lieu of seawater; the report also includes the addition of cobalt to the mineral resources.

"There is a shortage of high-quality, large scale copper projects and the completion of our updated Technical Report comes at an ideal time. Capstone, with the support of KORES, is commencing a strategic process for Santo Domingo which will evaluate alternatives relating to the ownership of the Project. In addition, we will consider the potential for streaming opportunities given the gold reserve and cobalt resource to help finance the Project," said Darren Pylot, President and CEO. "Capstone is committed to the advancement of Santo Domingo and maximizing the value of the Project for our shareholders in a responsible manner that ensures our participation maintains financial flexibility for continued growth and financial security for the Company's existing operations."

"This positive Technical Report reconfirms the value of Santo Domingo as a desirable copper-iron-gold project that has an approved Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in a mining-friendly jurisdiction with local community support," added Pylot. "The Project has an after-tax Net Present Value (NPV) of $1.03 billion and an Internal Rate of Return (IRR) of 21.8%. Additionally, there are a number of opportunities related to cobalt recovery, improving gold recovery, automation and infrastructure sharing that we will evaluate in 2019 to further enhance the value of Santo Domingo."

"In addition to the approved EIA, Santo Domingo also has the Maritime Concession for a new port for the export of copper and iron concentrates," continued Pylot. "We are advancing engineering and have received three of the five long lead construction permits, with the rest expected to be received in 2019. We are targeting Santo Domingo to be construction-ready by early 2020."

The Santo Domingo Project will include development of two open pit mines using conventional drilling, blasting, loading with diesel hydraulic shovels, and truck haulage, and a copper-iron concentrator designed to process a nominal 65,000 tonnes per day (tpd) to 60,000 tpd (throughput is reduced in the latter years as the ore becomes slightly harder) using Semi-Autogenous Grinding (SAG) and ball milling, with conventional flotation utilizing desalinated water to produce a copper concentrate. Magnetite iron will be recovered from the copper rougher tailings using Low Intensity Magnetic Separation (LIMS). The planned infrastructure for the Project also includes a tailings storage facility, an iron concentrate pipeline and a third party desalinated water supply pipeline; a port-located magnetite iron concentrate filter plant and stockpile; a port-located copper concentrate storage building; a desalination plant; ship loading facilities; and on-site and off-site infrastructure and support facilities.