Capstone achieves commercial production at Cozamin

Vancouver – Capstone Mining (CS-T) has officially joined the ranks of producing companies after achieving commercial production more than two weeks ahead of schedule at its wholly owned Cozamin copper-silver-zinc mine in Zacatecas State, Mexico.

Capstone successfully commissioned the Cozamin plant in June, expecting to achieve commercial production by the end of September. During the month of August, all of the mill parameters exceeded 90% of the feasibility design, including throughput and recoveries.

Mill throughput averaged 916 tons per day for the month, near design capacity of 1,000 tons. Concentrate production included 1,419 tons of copper concentrate grading 24% copper, 600 tons of zinc concentrate grading 47% zinc, and 153 tons of lead concentrate at 70% lead.

The San Roberto mine feeding the Cozamin plant produced 20,000 tons in August, with additional tons of development and clean-up ore taken from stockpiles on surface. The average head grades for mill tonnage was 1.4% copper, 0.6% lead, 1.8% zinc and 0.66 grams silver per ton.

Initial sales for salable concentrates stored as inventory on site are expected this month, and are expected to translate into the sale of 1.05 million lbs. copper, 621,528 lbs. zinc, 308,560 lbs. lead, and 63,000 oz. of silver contained in concentrates.

A 5,000-metre, phase-four drilling planned for this month will further explore the down-dip and western extents of the Mala Noche vein system and also explore for potential skarn and stockwork mineralization at depth.

The surface exploration drilling program will be followed by a 20,000-metre, phase-five underground drilling program, with two-thirds of this focused on targets areas on the western portion of the deposit where previous surface exploration drilling intersected ore-grade mineralization. The remaining one-third will be focused on upgrading indicated and inferred resources.

At a 1% copper cutoff grade, the Cozamin mine project hosts measured and indicated resources of 2.76 million tonnes grading 85.42 grams silver and 0.05 gram gold per tonne, 2.5% copper, 1.12% zinc, and 0.47% lead. Inferred resources (at the same cutoff grade) provide another 3.09 million tonnes averaging 79.07 grams silver, 0.06 gram gold, 2.22% copper, 1.29% zinc and 0.27% lead.

The aforementioned resource estimates integrate 10,320.97 metres of diamond drilling and 2,706 assays from 47 underground core holes and 768 channel samples collected in 2006. These results augment 25,325.44 metres of previous drilling in 37 surface and 66 underground core holes and 48 underground channel samples (used in the previous estimate).