By Ellsworth Dickson
Minera Alamos Inc. [MAI-TSXV] has been working on its 100%-owned, advanced-stage, Los Verdes, copper-molybdenum project in Sonora, Mexico. Due to the changing conditions in the mining sector, under the leadership of Chris Frostad, CEO, the company has redesigned its 2012 PEA that now features much lower capital expenditures with mine construction targeted to start in 2016.
In an interview, discussing the company’s new approach, Frostad told Resource World, “There have been three primary changes. First, our original plan was to have a 3,000 tonne-per-day plant; however, we then took a look at what a 400 tonne-per-day plant would look like. It would cost less, get into production quicker and generate revenue. Second, since we have a high-grade ore deposit – a little over 1% copper equivalent – we were able to design a high-grade starter pit which means that the original resource that we would be mining is closer to 2%. That doubles the amount of concentrate that we could produce, or divides our production costs in half.”
Frostad continued, “Third, we will utilize ore sorting technology which our team has used on other projects. Made by TOMRA Sorting, the sorter uses X-rays to separate lower grade from higher grade crushed rock on a conveyor. This has the potential to double the ore grade to about 4%. We can save the lower grade material for processing later.” …
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