El
Corpus, Honduras- April 2, 2013- The
end of March saw the first complete month’s production of the newly installed
and commissioned ADR plant at the mine in El corpus, Honduras. We are excited to report that the results of
the first month with all of the various elements of the plant appear to
validate the cost and time that has been devoted to the expansion and updating
of the mine operations over the past eighteen months.
Gold production at
the plant in the first quarter of the year has exceeded production in 2012 by
over 700% and we believe that this will continue to increase.
Although the actual
launch of the plant with all of its various components operational has been
delayed almost four months longer than we expected, the wait has been well worth
the time. As we continue to optimize the
plant’s operating capacity as well as increasing the crushing and recovery
field loading processes, we are optimistic that we will achieve our goals of
producing 1,000 ounces of gold each month.
There are many areas of production where we can streamline operations to
get to the point where we will be loading the recovery field with 500 tons of
ore per day, which is the amount of ore needed to meet our production
goals. Since we began loading the
recovery field, we have loaded approximately 250 tons per day and now that the
plant is operating, we can begin to increase that to the targeted amount of 500
tons per day. Our experience with the
ADR plant shows that it will process all of the gold bearing solution coming
from the recovery field with no difficulty.
The image below is
of dore bars produced on-site after 1 month of the mine’s operations
prior to expansion. The same amount of
gold represented in this photo is now produced on a weekly basis.