Gold explorer Lydian International (TSE:LYD) has received a key sign-off required for a heap leach facility at its Amulsar project in Armenia.
A joint working group between the company and the government has now been completed and a new location for the heap leach - a valley fill heap - has been endorsed, Lydian said.
An alternative site was sought after a government resolution applied a buffer zone across a water tunnel at the project, but the latest location does not conflict with any national laws or regulations.
Minister Vache Gabrielyan, the Armenian government’s head of staff, said the result was "an important milestone" in the full-scale development of the Amulsar project.
"We are hopeful that the mode of cooperation achieved in the working group will induce the Amulsar project to pick up further steam”.
Lydian's newly appointed chief operating officer Marc Leduc, added: “The new proposed facility will be located four kilometres southwest of the previous proposed facility and seven kilometres from the pits and is a potentially good valley fill.
"The valley has ample capacity for ore stacking and realising the blue-sky potential of the project.
"We expect that the final design will incorporate a number of cost saving features, such as the use of trucks rather than conveyors to stack the ore on the pad and less required earthworks."
In an interview, Lydian chief executive Tim Coughlin said the new facility was one "we don't think is going to cost us much more than the previous designs we've had".
"In fact, we're hoping the engineers are going to bring it on cost."
He added that the working group process had brought the firm and the government "a lot closer together".
Also today, Lydian said the authorities had extended the deadline for the firm to complete building the open pit to September 26, 2018 and handed down an official exploration agreement for the new heap leach site.
Lydian started geotechnical drilling and trenching of the proposed new site on September 30 this year and anticipates that all work required for a feasibility study of the site to be completed by the end of November.
It plans to resume its permitting process in the fourth quarter of 2013 and, as part of this, aims to complete the required environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA) in the second quarter of next year.
Coughlin told the interview that he believed Lydian remained a good prospect for investors, highlighting that a good project was one which had good all in costs when the gold price was under significant pressure.