Jan 12 2015
Latin American Minerals Inc. (the "Company") announces construction of three heap leach pads and related infrastructure, now in operation at its wholly owned and fully permitted Independencia Mine, part of the Company's Paso Yobai gold property located in Paraguay. A fourth leach pad is under construction.
The Company further announces that it has re-paid the CAD$120,000 short-term loan (September 29, 2014 press release) along with $2,400 of interest, which was secured to partially offset start-up operating costs for the heap leach program.
Miles Rideout, President and CEO stated, "The successful implementation of three pilot heap leach pads and infrastructure is a major step forward in achieving positive operating cash flow and reinforces the local mining support and cost-effectiveness of mining operations in Paraguay. The heap leach operations are now running concurrently with on-going gravity plant gold extraction. With an anticipated increase in pilot gold production, the Company expects to be in a position to continue exploration of Paso Yobai's large epithermal gold system."
The Company was pleased to obtain the support of a local Paraguayan bank which provided a USD$700,000 loan in June 2014 to partially fund the construction of the heap leach initiative. The Company is in full compliance with all loan covenants.
During the second half of 2014, the Company designed and constructed:
- an on-site plant to agglomerate gold-bearing saprolite rock with cement in preparation for heap leach processing,
- three 8,000 metric ton capacity reusable leach pads where gold is leached from the prepared mineralization and captured in columns of activated carbon (see Images I and II below), and
- an on-site desorption plant to recover gold from the carbon columns, prior to final on-site smelting.
A version of this press release complete with photographs of the leach pads while under construction is available at www.latinamericanminerals.com/news/.
Dr. Waldo Perez is the Company's internal "Qualified Person" under the requirements of National Instrument 43-101, and has reviewed and approved this news release.
The Company's heap leach processing decision is based on an exploration initiative and is not based on a feasibility study of mineral reserves demonstrating economic and technical viability. As a consequence, readers are advised that there is no certainty the proposed operations will be economically viable.