Animas Resources Ltd. (TSX.V: ANI): is pleased to provide the following update on progress at the Santa Gertrudis Gold Project in Sonora State, Mexico made since it regained access to the property in late June.
Assessment of Mining Potential
Animas recently re-focused its efforts to take advantage of the high gold prices and continues to work on moving the project towards production. The work done recently reflects this effort and the Board of Directors was changed to add more practical mining experience to the Company while still retaining the former Board members as close technical advisors.
Animas has looked at several methods of putting Santa Gertrudis back into production (both the existing heaps and the in-situ deposits), and currently the Company is assessing various alternatives. Alternatives under consideration are: having a third party company mine the existing resources, putting the property into production itself, or hiring an independent contractor to run the operation.
From May 1991 to October 2000, the SG Property produced 564,000 ounces of gold at an average grade of 2.13 grams per tonne from a mine commissioned to start with 1.2 million ounces. During the same period, the Amelia Mine, previously owned by an Australian company, produced over 1 million tonnes at 2.88 grams of gold per tonne from the Amelia deposits directly north of the SG operations. Mining and processing activity later ceased due to low gold prices during the late 1990’s. These past results are not an indication of future production potential.
Sampling of the Heaps
Immediately subsequent to the Restitución Provisional, which re-instated Animas’s ownership of the properties, Animas began a program of historic heap leach pad sampling for the purpose of evaluating the economic viability of restarting gold production from the existing heap leach pads at Santa Gertrudis. The heaps were sampled by Animas personnel (108 – 15-20 kg samples) and analyzed by ALS Chemex in Vancouver. During this sampling program, it also was determined that the illegal miner had damaged the heap liner, and a complaint was filed with PROFEPA (Procuraduría Federal de Protección al Ambiente), the environmental enforcement agency in Mexico. Although this damage is not expected to affect future plans on the project, their work was done without a required environmental permit (or Animas permission) and resulted in at least one hole perforating the existing heap liner.
The results from the assays of these samples will be released shortly.
Community Meetings
Animas’ President, Mr. John Wilson, attended an official meeting with the entire ejido membership in August, 2012, and several unofficial meetings have also been held with selected ejido members. The local ejido controls surface access to the Cristina deposit, and the Company has a surface access agreement with the ejido for the existing heaps. Although there is a significant amount of ejido support for advancing the project, Animas has yet to finalize a new agreement with the ejido. As such, there is still work to do to repair the Company-ejido relationship since a part of ejido leadership was responsible for the illegal agreement with a third party individual. It should be noted that very strong legal actions continue against several of the past ejido leaders in regard to their illegal agreement.
The technical contents of this news release have been reviewed by Mr. John Wilson, B.Sc., M.S. (Geol.), QP, President, CEO and Director of Animas.
About Animas Resources Ltd.
Animas Resources Ltd., a North American mineral resource company focused on acquisition and discovery, consolidated the Santa Teresa District’s Santa Gertrudis precious metal and related deposits and prospects within a 562 square kilometer land holding. Our mission is to grow Animas through development, discovery and acquisition of high-quality mineral deposits and to build upon the historic gold resource base at Santa Gertrudis, Mexico, and maintain a pipeline of only the highest quality projects.
This news release was prepared by Company management, who take full responsibility for its content.
For additional information, contact Animas Resources Ltd. at 604-687-6197, or you may register to receive future news releases at www.animasresources.com.
“John R. Wilson”
___________________________________
John R. Wilson, President & CEO
Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
This press release contains “forward-looking information” which may include, but is not limited to, statements with respect to drilling plans, timing of our planned NI 43-101 resource report, timing of assays, resource estimates, projections, our planned exploration and drilling programs, the availability of future financing for exploration and other plans, projections, estimates and expectations. Such forward-looking statements reflect our current views with respect to future events and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including, the risks and uncertainties outlined in our most recent financial statements and reports and registration statement filed with the Canadian securities administrators (available at www.sedar.com). Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those anticipated, believed, estimated or expected