Exmin, Hochschild pick up Manhattan’s old Moris mine

Vancouver-based junior Exmin Resources (EXM-V) has teamed up with Peru’s Hochschild Mining Group to buy the closed Santa Maria de Moris heap-leach gold-silver mine located in the Moris district of Mexico’s Chihuahua state.

Situated about 15 km west of Gammon Lake Resources’ Ocampo gold-silver mine, the 7,600-ha Moris mine property is contiguous with Exmin’s wholly owned Moris exploration property, which is subject to an earn-in option agreement with Hochschild

Canada’s Manhattan Minerals starting mining Moris as a 3,000-tonne-per-day heap-leach operation in May 1997 and continued until April 1999, when the mine was shut owing to low gold prices.

Left behind were measured and indicated resources of 4.1 million tonnes grading 1.67 grams gold per tonne and 5.79 grams silver, or about 220,000 contained oz. gold and 750,000 contained oz. silver. (These figures were calculated prior to the introduction of National Instrument 43-101.)

A group of Mexican investors named Minera Moris bought the mine from Manhattan after its closure and has kept it under care and maintenance ever since.

Today, Exmin says that most of the installations, including the crushing circuit, heap-leach stacking system, leach pads and metals recovery circuit are in “reasonably good shape.”

Under the terms of the latest acquisition, The Hochschild-Exmin joint venture will pay Minera Moris US$6 million, plus a 15% value added tax, for 100% of the rights to the concessions and other mine assets. Hochschild will own 70% of the project and Exmin, 30%.

Hochschild has extended a US$1.5-million line of credit to Exmin to help it make its share of the payment or any mine-development costs.

Hochschild, as operator of the joint venture, has already begun a due diligence program that includes diamond drilling.

Exmin president Karl Boltz commented in a release that, pending due diligence, “we believe the project can reach the break-even point in less than two years and can quickly generate significant positive cash flow, that can be used to finance exploration and development on our other projects.”

Hochschild owns and operates three mines in Peru and is the majority shareholder and operator of the San Jose gold-silver project in Argentina. Last year, the company produced about 10 million oz. silver and 230,000 oz gold.