The $1.9-billion cash payment is split $1.33 million for the Salobo gold stream and $570 million for the Sudbury gold stream. In addition, Silver Wheaton will make ongoing payments of the lesser of $400/oz (subject to a 1% annual inflation adjustment from 2016 for Salobo) and the prevailing market price for each ounce of gold delivered under the agreement.

Gold production from these assets will accrue to Silver Wheaton retroactively from January 1, 2013. Silver Wheaton expects the agreement to deliver an aver-age of 110,000 oz/y of gold to the com-pany over the next 20 years, approxi-mately 60,000 oz/y from Salobo and 50,000 oz/y from Sudbury.

Vale’s Salobo mine is based on the largest copper deposit ever found in Brazil. The mine began operating in May 2012 with a designed mill throughput capacity of 12 million mt/y. Vale has sub-sequently begun a second phase of con-struction to expand mill capacity to 24 million mt/y by the end of 2015.

Salobo has mine reserves of more than 1 billion mt at copper and gold grades of 0.69% and 0.43 g/mt, respectively.

The Sudbury gold stream covers the Coleman, Copper Cliff, Creighton, Garson, Stobie and Totten mines, and the development-stage Victor project. All of the orebodies contain a mix of nickel, copper, platinum group metals, cobalt, gold and silver.

The addition of the Vale streams will increase Silver Wheaton’s percentage of revenue generated from gold production over the next five years from 12% to a peak of around 25%.

Silver Wheaton President and CEO Randy Smallwood said, “While we have traditionally focused on silver, we have never been averse to strategically adding ‘the right’ gold streams to our portfolio. The world-class nature of the Sudbury operations and the Salobo mine, with its exciting expansion and exploration potential, along with the quality of Vale as an operating partner, convinced us that these assets would be ideal addi-tions to Silver Wheaton’s portfolio.”