General Minerals to spin-out silver-focused company

Vancouver – Appreciated prices and fundamentals for silver have prompted General Minerals (GNM-T) to spin-off certain South American assets to a new “silver-focused” corporation that would likely become a publicly traded company in due course.

The core assets of the new entity would be the Malku Khota silver project and the Laurani silver-gold-copper project, both situated in Bolivia. Another asset would be the Escalones copper-gold porphyry project in Chile, a joint venture with Phelps Dodge (PD-N).

General Minerals views Malku Khota as having potential to host a large low-to-modest grade silver deposit. Preliminary metallurgical testing has returned positive results and more test-work is planned. The project is situated in the Department of Potosi, and covers historic workings dating back to the colonial Spanish times.

Work to date has largely focused on two stratabound zones of silver mineralization traced over a strike length of about 3 kms with widths ranging from 20-200 metres. The mineralization is in the form of oxides, except where sulphides have survived the oxidation and leaching process.

Surface channel sampling has returned results greater than 10 grams silver per tonne from an area of about 320,000 square metres, with rare highs in the kilogram-per-tonne range. The best drill result (of more than 100 grams) was 77 metres grading 101 grams silver. More typically, results are in the range of 20-60 grams.

The Laurani project is situated 125 km south of La Paz, and is believed to have geological similarities to the Kori Kollo gold mine, 55 km to the southeast. The silver-gold-copper project features mineralized veins and disseminations within a large caldera complex.

General Minerals has seven properties in the U.S., three in Bolivia, one in Chile, and five in Mexico. The target mineralization at these properties is primarily copper with associated silver and gold. Two of the American properties have been optioned by a major company.