Eldorado Gold Crushes First Ore at Skouries, Targets Q3 Concentrate

Eldorado Gold crushed the first ore through the Skouries copper-gold project's primary crusher in northern Greece, a milestone that puts first concentrate production on track for the third quarter. The company said ore is now feeding the coarse ore stockpile as staged commissioning moves through the crushing, grinding, flotation and tailings circuits.

Commissioning is running on a staged basis across multiple areas. Dry, wet and hot testing is advancing where practical. Individual systems are being checked against design parameters and handed from the construction team to the operations team in sequence. The company expects to introduce ore to the grinding and flotation circuits as those systems finish commissioning, building toward first copper-gold concentrate in Q3 2026 and commercial production by Q4.

Power infrastructure has been a pacing item. Construction of all 12 transmission towers and conductors is complete. A coordinated eight-hour outage on the transmission line allowed installation of the final tower. Initial substation tests were finished by a third-party group. Final site energization still depends on inspection, testing and metering equipment installation by the Greek authority, plus final sign-off. In the meantime, Eldorado added extra gensets to keep commissioning moving, including readiness work inside the process plant. The major systems – crushing, grinding, flotation, concentrate handling and tailings disposal – require that final power before full operation.

Open-pit mining is running ahead of schedule. The company has built an ore stockpile of roughly 3.9 million tonnes, about 3.4 million from the open pit, which it says provides enough feed for a controlled ramp-up through commissioning and into the first year of production. Underground development continues in parallel.

Eldorado's Alpha Score sits at 54/100, labeled Mixed, within the Industrials sector. The stock page is available here: WM stock page.

The Skouries project has faced repeated delays over the past decade, tied to permitting, power infrastructure and earlier ownership changes. The current timeline – first concentrate by Q3 and commercial production by Q4 2026 – depends on the Greek power authority completing its inspection and metering work on schedule. Each quarter of delay pushes revenue from a project that is expected to become one of Greece's largest copper-gold mines.

Simon Hille, Executive Vice President and COO, is the qualified person under NI 43-101 for the technical information in the release. Eldorado trades on the TSX and NYSE under ELD and EGO.