The Ministry of Natural Resources yesterday said that the government is advancing the construction of the Puruni River Bridge and supporting access roads and the project is being done by Canadian company, Aris Mining which is pursuing gold exploration at Toroparu in Region Seven.
A release from the ministry said that the project further demonstrates the Government’s commitment to strengthening infrastructure for Guyana’s mining and forestry sectors. It made no mention of Aris Mining’s involvement in the Toroparu project.
The ministry said that the project will replace the existing pontoon crossing with a permanent 109-metre modular steel bridge and improved access roads.
No cost for the bridge was given or how it will be financed.
“The new infrastructure will provide a safer and more reliable connection along this important route in Region 7, while allowing heavy industrial traffic to be diverted away from the main community road”, the ministry said.
It added that the investment will support “an already productive economic corridor encompassing nearly 500 mining properties and concessions, as well as several large forestry concessions”. Improved connectivity, it said, will facilitate the movement of workers, equipment, fuel, timber, mining supplies and other goods, while providing businesses and transport operators with a more dependable route.
“Importantly, the development extends beyond supporting extractive activities”, the ministry said. It stated that the wider project provides for community infrastructure, including a multi-purpose Government facility, health centre, digital school facility, playground, agricultural area and a formal waste-disposal area. It said that this reinforces the Government’s commitment to ensuring that development within the natural resources sector delivers tangible benefits to surrounding communities.
The release said that the project has progressed through planning, reconnaissance, site investigations and design development, with construction now beginning. The Ministry of Natural Resources says it will coordinate the project, with technical oversight from the Ministry of Public Works, and the works are expected to be completed by December 2026.
Toroparu has been described as a 100% owned gold development project with open pit and underground mineral resources.
In October 2025, Aris Mining published results of its Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) confirming Toroparu as a “large-scale, long-life open pit gold project with robust economics”.
Its website says that after the GCM Mining and Aris Gold merger and the arrival of its management team in September 2022, the company paused the Project’s previous construction plans to reassess the Project on a first-principles basis, which included completing a new geological interpretation, updating the mineral resource estimate, and executing optimization studies. “The result is a robust PEA that outlines a major new growth and diversification opportunity for Aris Mining”, the website said.
It says that a Prefeasibility Study is in progress and a construction decision is expected in early 2027. It listed the attributes of the intended project as follows:
- Mill capacity of 7.0 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) – a scale that supports attractive investment returns and extends mine life to over 20 years.
- Measured and indicated mineral resources of 126.9 million tonnes (Mt) at 1.30 grams per tonne (g/t) gold containing 5.3 million ounces (Moz) of gold and inferred mineral resources of 22.9 Mt at 1.6 g/t gold containing 1.2 Moz of gold.
- Average annual life-of-mine gold production of 235,000 ounces.
- Low life-of-mine cash costs of US$826/oz of gold and all-in-sustaining costs of US$1,289/oz of gold. The current price of gold per ounce is around US$4,400.
Payback is envisaged in three years from the start of operations, assuming a base case gold price of US$3,000 per ounce.
Aris Mining also operates the Segovia and Marmato underground gold mines in Colombia, which together produced approximately 257,000 ounces of gold in 2025.
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