onstantine Metal Resources last week released an amended technical report for its 2019 preliminary economic assessment (PEA) following a review by Canadian securities regulators.

The amended report contains a new section outlining the company’s preliminary plan to barge ore from Haines to Skagway and to prepare concentrate at Skagway’s ore terminal for shipment on ocean-going vessels to Asia.

The company stated in a 2019 press release about its PEA that it intended to ship copper and zinc concentrate from Haines to the Skagway ore terminal for load out onto ocean-going vessels to Asia, and the amended report includes a few additional details about using the Alaska Marine Lines’ port facility in Haines.

As in the original PEA, the amended report recommends conducting a “trade-off evaluation” of constructing a company-owned port facility in Haines as an alternative to moving concentrate through Skagway.

Constantine said in a March 11 press release that the report was filed “as result of a Technical Disclosure Review by the British Columbia Securities Commission” and “does not change the accompanying mineral resource estimates, economic analysis, conclusions, and recommendations provided” in the original report from 2019.

Elise Palmer, spokesperson at the British Columbia Securities Commission, declined to provide details about the commission’s review. “To protect the integrity of its oversight of BC-listed issuers, the findings or outcomes of these reviews remain confidential unless the review leads to a formal public action such as an administrative enforcement proceeding,” Palmer said in an email to the CVN.

Garfield MacVeigh, president and CEO of Constantine, told the CVN that “there was no new substantive information required by the BCSC.”

“We responded to their comments about how the document was formatted and organized, noting information in some sections belonging elsewhere in the report. The BCSC also sought clarification of who the (QP) qualified person was for some of the technical sections of the report.”

The amended report says that Constantine plans to use Alaska Marine Lines’ port facility in Haines “for the delivery of many goods and equipment as well as for barging concentrates to other ports.” Concentrate trailers would be barged to Skagway, the report says, then concentrate would be shuttled a kilometer to Skagway’s ore terminal, which currently is owned by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA), and loaded onto vessels bound for Asian smelters.

AIDEA announced last fall that it wouldn’t renew its lease on the Skagway ore terminal, which expires in 2023. At that point the terminal will go back into the municipality’s ownership and oversight.

Skagway Borough Mayor Andrew Cremata said he hasn’t been in contact with representatives of Constantine since 2019 and that the plan outlined in the amended report is “news to us.”

“If there’s an entity that wants to do business in Skagway, we’d like to talk with them…and vet it through our community,” Cremata said. “I’m assuming that this report is just hypothetically saying something that could happen.”

Cremata said the ore loader at the terminal is antiquated and will be taken down in 2023, and that if a company wants to use the terminal it will need to invest in infrastructure.

MacVeigh said the amended report “remains effective as of June 3rd, 2019 and at that time the existing Skagway terminal was selected as the preferred option because it was considered competitive with other options that were evaluated on a very preliminary basis.”

Constantine’s PEA recommends evaluating the construction of a loading terminal in Haines to replace the Skagway facility. “Without that study and how it may be funded, we are not prepared to provide a cost difference, however we do not expect any cost difference to be material to the project,” MacVeigh said, adding that the company doesn’t need to be fully sure of its ore shipment plan until a feasiblity study has been completed. That study, which would come after a pre-feasibility study, would “include a very detailed analysis of all the options,” MacVeigh said.

MacVeigh confirmed Constantine hasn’t been in touch with AML or the Skagway Borough about the shipment plan in the report. But, he said, “we understand that the Skagway community is still looking at ways to continue to provide an ore terminal in Skagway for their Yukon neighbors after the existing lease expires.”

Last August three environmental groups—Lynn Canal Conservation, Rivers Without Borders and Alaska Clean Water Advocacy—filed a complaint with Canadian authorities claiming that Constantine misled investors in public statements about paved road access to the Palmer Project and Haines’ port facilities.

Following the complaint, TSX Venture Exchange last fall requested that Constantine adjust some public statements about road access. The company revised language on its website and in blurbs on investment sites, specifying that Palmer is accessed by logging roads as well as a paved highway.

Constantine maintained that it has always been clear with shareholders, as evidenced in its 2019 preliminary economic assessment, which says Palmer is accessed by “22 km of gravel road and 50 km of paved highway.”

“The Palmer Project has paved road access within a short distance of the edge of the property and good gravel road access from the paved road to the Palmer deposit that is within the property/project boundaries,” MacVeigh wrote in a November letter to the editor. “We want to reiterate that the Palmer Project and property has excellent road access for work being done in our exploration phase. Additionally, we do not pretend to have the final road access that is required for a producing mine.”