El Tigre Silver Corp. (CVE:ELS) (OTCQX:EGRTF), which holds the rights to nine mineral concessions in Mexico, said Tuesday it has appointed Lisa Dea as CFO, replacing Grant Smith, who has resigned. 

Dea, with more than 19 years of experience in the finance, securities and accounting fields, was the VP of finance and CFO of Silvermex Resources from May 2011 until it was acquired in July 2012. 

Prior to this, she was the VP of finance and CFO for Polaris Minerals for five years, and was responsible for the overall financial management of the company, including its debt and capital market activities. Dea oversaw the implementation of financial controls, processes and corporate financing strategies to bring Plorais from development-stage to a large-scale commercial producer.

She previously spent 11 years at Deloitte & Touche, working her way up to senior manager. 

“We are pleased to have attracted someone with Ms. Dea’s experience and expertise to fill this key role,” said president and CEO, Stuart Ross. 

“Lisa brings the first-hand experience of taking a company from development to production in Mexico. She will be instrumental in implementing and maintaining financial systems and controls for El Tigre as the company transitions into a production company.” 

El Tigre holds the rights to 100% of nine mineral concessions, eight of which comprise 215 sq km in the Sierra El Tigre, north eastern Sonora, Mexico, known as the El Tigre property. The additional 32-hectare claim is separate from its flagship asset. 

The company’s business plan has two key components. The first is to continue toward the development of a processing facility to recover silver and gold, and the second is to reinvest the revenue from the processing toward the exploration and development of the in-situ mineral resource.

Late last year, the junior explorer chose to option into the extensive surface tailings that resulted from the former Lucky Tiger mine in the Sierra El Tigre, as part of an agreement signed with a private owner in 2011. Under the terms of that deal, the company had up to two years to evaluate the tailings, which are located on its El Tigre concessions, and design a procedure to extract the contained silver.            

Its plan is to quickly generate cash flow from the tailings pile of the old Mexican mine, which will fund the further exploration and development of its flagship resource. Its first order of business is to build the processing facility to recover the precious metals from the tailings pile, which contains almost 1.4 million tonnes of material – a result of 35 years of prior production.