[1] The deposit is part of the Corriente Copper Belt located in the Amazon province of Zamora-Chinchipe.

[3] Despite the project's potential, and just days before Congress passed a new mining law in 2013, Kinross pulled out of Ecuador after a dispute over windfall taxes, reporting a loss of $720 million.

[4][5][6] In 2014 Kinross sold its entire interest in the project to Fortress Minerals Corporation.

The company was renamed Lundin Gold and the Fruta del Norte deposit went into production in 2019.

[7][8] The deposit was discovered by a combination of a conceptual exploration model that predicted mineralization might occur buried in a pull-apart basin (Aurelian Exploration Manager Steve Leary) and the observation that some silicification of these basin sediments had occurred at Fruta del Norte by geologist Julio Soto.