Vancouver — Despite heavy rains and encountering clay lenses in the pit, Andean American Mining (AAG-V) has managed to sell 2,342 oz of gold and 5,227 oz of silver so far this year from its pilot plant at the Santa Rosa project in southeastern Peru.
The plant started in mid-August at the daily rate of 500 tonnes and finally ramped up to commerical production in April. The heap leach operation is running at approximately 1000 tonnes per day using a carbon column recovery process. Daily production is expected to reach 1,200-1,400 tonnes after various modifications are made, including expansion of the carbon-in-column capacity.
Clay lenses, which hamper recoveries, was encountered during the quarter forcing the company to move down about 30 metres in the pit to minimize the effects of the clays. For the quarter ended March 31, the head grade came in at 3 grams gold per tonne and a total of 27,660 tonnes were agglomerated.
At a daily rate of 1,000 tonnes, the plant is expected to last 4.5 years. The estimate is based on the current resource of 1.5 million tonnes grading 3.85 grams gold and 56.4 grams silver per tonne.
Be the first to comment on "Andean American ramps up Santa Rosa"