Mining Weekly

PanTerra Gold Limited, advises that the Albion/CIL process plant at the Company’s Las Lagunas gold/silver project in the Dominican Republic is now running at its design throughput of 100tph. A replacement ball mill motor has been installed, with the mill comfortably handling the grind of coarser refractory tailings from the Pueblo Viejo mine currently being fed to the plant. The existing motor, which is still under warranty, will be rewound so as to achieve nameplate capacity and then serve as a spare. Anticipated income for the past six months has been significantly reduced, primarily as a consequence of design/manufacturing issues with major equipment, and the Company is investigating the prospect of claims for compensation against several suppliers. Loan repayments to the project financier have been rescheduled to commence 31 March 2013 which will assist short-term cash flows. With the regrind section of the process plant (ball mill and ultrafine grinding mill) now operating to design capacity, technical staff can concentrate on fine tuning the three other important circuits of the plant (flotation, oxidation, and CIL) in order to optimise gold and silver recoveries. Updated forecasts of project cash flows and profits will be established after the plant has been running in a steady state for about four to six weeks.