Luna is working to bring its Mineração Aurizona mine in Brazil back into production. True Gold’s acquisition by Endeavour Mining Corp (TSX:EDV) for $240 million in March meant Luna was able to bring a whole team of seasoned mine builders on board in one fell swoop.
Five former True Gold senior executives officially joined Luna on August 15, including former True Gold CEO Christian Milau, who is now Luna's new CEO. True Gold built the Karma gold mine in Burkina Faso.
“A big part of building any mine is the people that you have,” Luna board chairman Steven Krause told Business in Vancouver. “And the True Gold team did a fantastic job… where they stepped into a very difficult situation in West Africa and were able to right the ship there, build the mine and ultimately sold their project to Endeavor Mining.
“They were looking for something as a whole team. They work really well as a team. They came as a group. It worked out to be a great fit for them.”
Luna had an operating mine in Brazil, but it was shut down in February 2015 when the company ran into financial trouble. Krause said the mine needs to be upgraded, but the company needed to restructure in order to raise the necessary funds.
“We were in a very difficult situation,” Krause said. “We had to really restructure our share capital and our debt side, as we had a very unfavourable debt structure and streaming structure on our company.”
The company was able to renegotiate a new streaming deal and restructure its debt and is now working towards restarting its Aurizona mine in Brazil.
