EMC Gold Corporation
EMC Gold (renamed from Black Dragon Gold Corp, Dec. 2025) owns 100% of Salave, a large underground gold resource (JORC ~1.56-1.57 Moz Au, Feb 2025) at a Roman-era mine site in northern Spain -- one of Europe's largest undeveloped gold deposits. The company appointed a Spain-based CEO (effective July 2026) to drive permitting, including a December 2024 application for 'Strategic Investment' status under new Asturian law aimed at overcoming the project's long, contested permitting history.
Notable vs. Peers
- Jurisdiction risk score of 6/10 is meaningfully riskier than the peer average of 7.8/10.
Lifecycle Milestones
Not in place: mill, tailings facility. Not yet determined: grid power.
Jurisdiction (40%)6/10
Spain is a stable, high-income EU jurisdiction with low sovereign risk, but the Salave project specifically carries severe project-level permitting/social-license risk -- over two decades of blocked permits under three different owners, with active organized local opposition.
Infrastructure (40%)4.3/10
No confirmed mill, confirmed road access, and no confirmed tailings facility at Salave Gold Project, Asturias, Spain; grid power not yet researched, counted at a neutral 5/10 until established.
Nearby producing mine (20%)Not yet researched
No producing mine within 50 km in our reference list (nearest listed: El Valle-Boinas (Orvana Minerals Corp.), 57 km). That list doesn't cover every mining district yet, so a longer distance isn't scored as remote.
Acquisition Susceptibility
A relative ranking of how closely this company matches the profile of juniors that have actually been acquired — not a probability, and not a reason to buy. Acquisitions are rare: only a few dozen significant deals happen a year across a universe of thousands of juniors, so even a high score here describes a long shot. The strongest signal in the research, a producer that already owns part of the company, is scored from its disclosed strategic shareholders. A producer that is a joint-venture or earn-in partner on the project, rather than a shareholder, isn't captured yet.
How this score is built
- Disclosed pending dealSub-score: Not scored
No pending acquisition or merger disclosed (checked)
Not scored: having no deal in flight isn't held against a company.
Weight 26.25% - Producer's strategic stakeSub-score: Not scored
No producer holds a disclosed stake on file (holder register researched) See holders
Not scored: most juniors that do get bought had no prior toehold, so a missing stake says little either way.
Weight 25% - Distance to a producing mineSub-score:4.8/10
Nearest producing mine: El Valle-Boinas (Orvana Minerals Corp.), 57 km
10 next to a producing mine, 8 at 20 km, 5 at 50 km, 0 beyond 200 km.
Weight 22.5% · 46% here - Lifecycle stageSub-score:6/10
Stage: Preliminary Economic Assessment
Feasibility and permitting score 10, where deals cluster, and production 5.5; earlier stages score less, down to 1 at grassroots.
Weight 15% · 31% here - JurisdictionSub-score:6/10
Spain: jurisdiction score 6/10
Our jurisdiction score, used as is: higher means lower political and permitting risk.
Weight 6.75% · 14% here - CommoditySub-score:10/10
Primary commodity: Gold
Gold 10, copper 8, silver 5, nickel and uranium 4, others 2: most majors' deals are for gold.
Weight 4.5% · 9% here
Weight is each input's share of the full score. “Here” is its share of this company's score: inputs that aren't scored are left out and the rest re-weighted, never counted as zero.
Your Rankings
Management Team
Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of EMC Gold Corporation since 6 July 2026; also a director of Emerita Resources Corp. 35+ years of experience across mine development, operations, project delivery, and stakeholder engagement in Europe and the Americas; Spain-based and fluent in Spanish, with a track record across Spanish mining operations including Saloro, Kinbauri España, MATSA, and Tungsten San Juan, focused on advancing the Salave Gold Project in northern Spain.
Insiders, Investors & Smart Money
Notable shareholders and insiders whose involvement is worth knowing about, plus what we're seeing from institutional/large-investor activity.
Checked, and no informed outside capital shows up. The largest holders are individuals — Paul Cronin at 8.46% and Alberto Lavandeira at 3.24%, both career mining executives connected to the company — alongside ConBrio Beteiligungen AG, a German investment holding company, at 4.42%. No producer has taken a stake, no resource-specialist fund appears, and institutional ownership reads zero against management ownership of 45.5%. This is a founder-and-executive-held register rather than one that outside capital has validated. A 1 here means checked-and-nothing-found, not that anything is wrong with the company.
No notable insiders tracked for this miner yet.
Reports, Presentations & Documents
EMC Gold, renamed from Black Dragon Gold in December 2025, owns 100% of the Salave underground gold project in Asturias, northern Spain, one of Europe's largest undeveloped gold deposits, at a Roman-era mine site. Its JORC resource, as of 1 February 2025, contains 1,250,000 oz of gold in measured and indicated resources (13.0 Mt at 3.01 g/t), plus 310,000 oz inferred, within a total of 17.1 Mt at 2.85 g/t. The March 2025 updated scoping study shows an after-tax NPV5% of US$506M and a 31% IRR at US$2,106/oz gold, with pre-production capital of US$206.7M, an all-in sustaining cost of US$790/oz and a 14-year mine life. Permitting has a long, contested history: on 1 April 2026 the High Court of Asturias upheld the Tapia de Casariego council's rejection of the company's proposed urban-plan amendment, a ruling the company calls procedural, and it is now discussing alternative development pathways with local and regional stakeholders under a Spain-based chief executive appointed in July 2026.