By 
Issued on behalf of Lake Victoria Gold Ltd.
Lake Victoria Gold Ltd. (TSXV: LVG) (OTCQB: LVGLF) (FSE: E1K) received Tanzania Mining Commission approval for a Tanzanian-led engineering, procurement and construction management team at its fully permitted Imwelo Gold Project, consolidating development workstreams under a single delivery framework as the Company advances toward construction.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, July 02, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Canada News Group News Commentary — Gold has spent 2026 trading near record levels, and the rally has done more than lift the share prices of the world’s largest producers. It has sharpened investor attention on the smaller developers working to turn permitted deposits into producing mines, where a single permitting or engineering milestone can re-rate an entire story. Against that backdrop, Lake Victoria Gold Ltd. (TSXV: LVG) (OTCQB: LVGLF) (FSE: E1K) has cleared an important step at its fully permitted Imwelo Gold Project in northwestern Tanzania, securing regulatory approval for the project-delivery team that will carry it through final engineering and into construction preparation.
A Key Step Toward Construction
Lake Victoria Gold’s wholly owned Tanzanian subsidiary, Tembo Gold (T) Limited, holds Mining Licence ML 538/2015 over the fully permitted Imwelo Gold Project. The Company has now formalized the appointment of City Engineering Company Ltd. as primary Engineering, Procurement and Construction Management contractor, working in association with Sutton Consulting International Limited as international technical-support partner. The appointment received approval from the Mining Commission on June 29, 2026 and is structured in accordance with Tanzania’s Mining (Local Content) Regulations, 2018.
The significance is less about any single contract than about what it consolidates. According to the Company, the approved EPCM structure brings engineering and development workstreams already underway at Imwelo together under a single, Tanzanian-led project delivery framework. For a junior developer, moving from scattered work programs to one coordinated delivery structure is the kind of operational discipline that typically precedes a construction decision.
“This is a key milestone in preparing Imwelo for construction,” said Marc Cernovitch, President and CEO of Lake Victoria Gold. “With Mining Commission approval received and our EPCM structure now formalized, we have moved another important step closer to building one of Tanzania’s next new gold mines. Equally important, we are advancing Imwelo the right way. Tanzania has a clear regulatory framework for local content and mining project development, and we believe long-term success in the country requires working constructively with the Mining Commission, respecting that framework, and ensuring Tanzanian companies and professionals play a meaningful role in project execution.”
A Tanzanian-Led Delivery Model
The EPCM structure combines established Tanzanian engineering and environmental capability with international technical review. CECL is a 100% Tanzanian-owned engineering and environmental services company registered with Tanzania’s National Environment Management Council, Engineers Registration Board and the Department of Water Resources. Its capabilities span geotechnical investigation, tailings storage facility and dam design, hydrology and hydrogeology modelling, environmental impact assessment support, water treatment design and independent project management.
Sutton, a multi-disciplinary mining and engineering consultancy and member of the Sutton Global Group, brings experience developing and operating gold and multi-commodity projects across Africa, including process plant design, tailings and dam engineering, geotechnical and environmental services, mine planning and EPCM project management. Under the structure, CECL leads project delivery and holds the primary contractual relationship as a qualifying Indigenous Tanzanian Company, providing the majority of project management, procurement and construction supervision through Tanzanian nationals, while Sutton provides specialist international engineering and technical review as sub-consultant, supported by an embedded knowledge-transfer programme consistent with Regulation 26 of the Mining (Local Content) Regulations, 2018.
Key development workstreams are advancing in parallel, including tailings and water infrastructure design, geotechnical and hydrogeological studies, process plant optimization, procurement support and construction quality assurance. The Company has framed the model as one designed to deliver more than engineering services alone, aiming to strengthen local engineering capability, expand opportunities for Tanzanian professionals and suppliers, and facilitate knowledge transfer intended to benefit Tanzania’s mining sector beyond Imwelo itself.
Why Local Content Matters in Tanzania
Tanzania’s Mining (Local Content) Regulations are designed to ensure the country’s mineral resources support broad-based national development by prioritizing Tanzanian ownership, employment, procurement and the transfer of skills and technology to local firms and professionals. For developers, working within that framework is not optional; it is a condition of advancing a project. LVG has positioned its approach to local content not merely as a regulatory requirement but as part of responsible mine development, with the Imwelo EPCM structure intended to support Tanzanian participation while maintaining international technical standards through Sutton’s specialist support.
That posture also reflects a practical reality of operating in the region. Tanzania has become one of Africa’s most active gold jurisdictions, and the government has made clear that future mine development should deliver tangible local benefit. By building its delivery model around a qualifying Tanzanian lead contractor from the outset, LVG is aligning the project with the direction the country’s regulators have set, which the Company believes is important to the continued growth of Tanzania’s mining-services sector and the successful development of new mines.
A Near-Term Developer in a Tier-One Goldfield
Imwelo sits in the Lake Victoria Goldfield, one of Africa’s most prolific gold districts and the namesake of the Company itself. LVG holds a 100% interest in the fully permitted Imwelo Project, located west of AngloGold Ashanti’s Geita Gold Mine, and a 100% interest in the Tembo project, which has more than fifty thousand metres of drilling and sits adjacent to Barrick’s Bulyanhulu Mine. The Company has also drawn validation from an equity investment by Barrick and a strategic partnership with Tanzania’s Taifa Group, whose mining arm is contracted to conduct contract mining and civil works at Imwelo.
The neighborhood is instructive. The same goldfield that hosts Imwelo and Tembo is home to large-scale operations run by some of the sector’s biggest names, a reminder of the geological endowment LVG is working within, even as the Company remains an early-stage developer whose scale and risk profile differ sharply from those of the senior producers operating nearby.
The Gold Producers Investors Watch
LVG is a junior gold developer and is not directly comparable to the established producers below. These comparisons are for industry context only; each company pursues a different strategy and operates at vastly greater scale, and none is a proxy for LVG or implies any partnership or comparable performance.
Newmont (NYSE: NEM) is the world’s largest gold producer, with operations and assets spanning North and South America, Australia, Africa and beyond. As a roughly $100-billion-market-cap senior producer, Newmont represents the large-cap anchor of the gold sector and a barometer for how record gold prices are translating into producer cash flows.
Barrick Mining (NYSE: B), formerly Barrick Gold, is one of the most recognizable names in the sector and a direct presence in LVG’s goldfield: its Bulyanhulu Mine sits adjacent to the Tembo project, and Barrick is among LVG’s equity investors. Barrick has been expanding its copper footprint while gold remains at the core of its business, and reported record quarterly free cash flow in its most recent results.
Agnico Eagle (NYSE: AEM), the largest mining company in Canada and the world’s second-biggest gold producer, operates mines across Canada, Australia, Finland and Mexico. Known for operational discipline in politically stable jurisdictions, Agnico Eagle illustrates the premium the market places on consistent, low-cost production and a track record of value-accretive consolidation.
AngloGold Ashanti (NYSE: AU) is the comp closest to home: its flagship Geita mine lies in the Lake Victoria goldfields of northwestern Tanzania, the very district where Imwelo is located, with Imwelo positioned west of Geita. A global producer with assets across Africa, Australia and the Americas, AngloGold offers a view of large-scale production within the same goldfield LVG is working to develop.
The Bottom Line
Regulatory approval of an EPCM structure is a preparation milestone, not a production decision, and LVG itself is careful to note that no feasibility study establishing mineral reserves under NI 43-101 has been completed for Imwelo. But in a year when gold has traded near record highs and investors are scrutinizing which permitted projects can actually reach construction, consolidating engineering and development work under a single, Mining-Commission-approved, Tanzanian-led delivery team is a concrete step in the right direction. With financing activities advancing in parallel, Lake Victoria Gold’s progress at Imwelo is a development story worth watching, with the financing close, final engineering, and any eventual construction decision the markers that matter from here.
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