What the projects in San Juan are going to buy

It produced its first gold without a plant of its own: toll milling at Casposo, with ore hauled 165 km and a start-up that the 2025 study put at ~USD 8.9 M of initial capital. Nobody planned that arrangement: idle capacity and an ore owner turned up, and the price brought them together. In August 2026 the company announced it is leaving processing at a third-party plant, so heavy haulage between Hualilán and Casposo is not a market that will last.

The start-up relied on an already installed asset that was underused —Austral Gold's Casposo plant— not on a new plant, and it generated operating demand from day one: haulage, plant services and concentrate logistics.

It has filed El Pachón (USD 9,500 M) and Agua Rica (USD 4,000 M) and neither is approved: it is the largest pool of capital waiting in the portfolio. A major decides a commitment like that on the certainty of being able to repatriate the return, which is exactly what the regime promises and free access to foreign exchange delivers.

At Agua Rica what blocks it is neither the copper price nor financing: it is the environmental exploitation permit, which has not been filed, plus the court front and Andalgalá's social licence. There the barrier is regulatory, and until it is removed there is no buying date to read.

The resolution sets it a deadline of Dec 31, 2027 to certify the minimum investment, and that forces early construction: the declared plan jumps from USD 33.5 M in the first year to USD 382.3 M in the second. Buying is pulled forward by the obligation to certify, not by construction progress.

It is a junior financing itself with strategic partners —Stellantis as an automotive offtaker and Rio Tinto through Nuton on the cap table—: the project advances at the pace at which it raises capital, and that pace moves with the cost of capital as much as with the copper price.

It was admitted on Nov 27, 2025 with a deadline of Dec 31, 2028: exploration, feasibility and construction of Carbonatos Profundos have to fit into three years, so buying is compressed by the resolution and not by the geological pace of the deposit at depth.

The mine is not idle: it produces residual gold through secondary leaching while it builds. That opens a replacement and services market on the existing plant today, in parallel with the one for the new works and with another buyer inside the same company.

Veladero has been operating since 2005 and produced 505 koz of gold in 2024: it is the asset that holds up San Juan's mining floor and it buys replacement every month —reagents, spares, mine services, haulage— without depending on any expansion being approved.

Leaching Phases 8 and 9 are two construction windows with a gap in between: July 2024 to May 2027 the first, September 2027 to June 2028 the second. For the earthworks and geomembrane supplier that gap decides whether it keeps equipment in the area or dismantles it.

By volume it is, in our reading, the largest buyer in San Juan's supply chain —264 active supplier companies, 158 of them from the province— and it has still not taken the investment decision: what it pays for today is pre-FID early works and detailed engineering, not construction. That is the open window, and it is the one almost nobody is watching.

It is the largest mining project in Argentine history: the mix is capital-intensive and permanent employment only arrives with operations, in 2030. What lands in Iglesia first is construction spending and the services that come with it.