Staged project development is pushed by the mining industry as a means of reducing capital costs and financing requirements. Companies justifying a staged development approach often rely on qualitative arguments and financial analysis that is unable to demonstrate the true value and risk management benefits of this approach. In this paper, we consider the Blackwater Gold Project to highlight the full value and risk management benefits of staging a project. We show that a staged project design reduces capital risk exposure by more than half while increasing value in contrast to a conventional design with a large initial capital investment.

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