The Canadian company Eldorado Gold has agreed to the sale of the Romanian gold mining project Certej, in Hunedoara County, for a total amount of up to $30 million. The new owner of the license, subject to an extension request not settled yet, is Toronto Stock Exchange-listed Varvara Development Group (formerly O Rei Resources Corp), which pledged not to use hazardous technologies based on cyanides that prompted protests from non-government organisations and blocked the project.
Varvara Development has already employed key figures to speed up the project, which has been held up by bureaucratic and environmental obstacles.
Among the members of the managing board there are Johan Meyer (formerly CEO of Franklin Templeton Romania and portfolio manager of Fondul Proprietatea for almost 9 years – November 2016 – June 2025), Mark Beacom, the general manager of Black Sea Oil&Gas (BSOG), the main concessionaire and operator of the Midia offshore natural gas field in the Romanian Black Sea, controlled by the American asset management group Carlyle, and Andrew Noble, the former British ambassador to Romania from 2018 to 2023, who brings “a nuanced understanding of political risk, stakeholder engagement and regulatory environments in emerging European markets,” according to Varvara Development Group.
At this moment, Varvara Development ceded 17% of its shares, valued at $4.5 million. The agreement stipulates that the remaining money, up to a total amount of $30 million, will be paid as follows: $3.5 million upon the extension of the project’s mining license by the Romanian authorities, $10 million upon the start of commercial production, and $12 million one year after the start of production.
“The company has changed its name to better reflect its new business: the safe and sustainable development of mining assets in Romania, using a cyanide-free approach. “Varvara” is the Romanian patron saint of miners,” the new owner of the Certej project developer said on November 28.
The concession license for the exploitation of the Certej gold, silver, and industrial andesite deposit perimeter with resources evaluated at RON 9 billion (EUR 1.8 billion) is held by the Romanian company Deva Gold, in which Dutch-registered Eldorado Gold Romania BV, which is the subject of the transaction, has over 80% of the shares. The other major shareholder of the Deva Gold concessionaire in Certej is the Romanian state-owned mining company Minvest SA (19.25%).
Eldorado Gold previously said it wanted to invest $270 million in Certej and to extract an average of over 4 tons of gold and 20.5 tons of silver annually. The mine’s operating life at Certej is expected to be 12 years.
In December last year, the mining regulator agency ANRMPSG initiated a draft government decision to approve the extension of the Certej exploitation license until 2030, but the decision has not been adopted to date, so Deva Gold sued the agency and the government, requesting the court to oblige the defendants to extend the license.
In 2019, the project was permanently blocked in court, by annulling the Urban Zonal Plan (PUZ), which had made it impossible to issue construction permits for the gold mine planned there by Eldorado Gold.
Separately, the project faced strong opposition from several national and international non-governmental organisations, which continues to this day. The company is accused of wanting to exploit cyanide in the Apuseni Mountains. The new owner of the developer now says it will not use cyanide. (Romania-Insider)