Overview
Stage | Production |
Mine Type | Open Pit |
Commodities |
|
Mining Method |
|
Production Start | ... |
Mine Life | 2025 |
At San Bartolomé, Andean produces silver primarily through contracts with the state-owned mining company, Corporación Minera de Bolivia (“COMIBOL”).
Andean also maintains various agreements to purchase oxidized, precious metal-bearing material from local miners based on market rates for processing at the San Bartolomé plant.
Material processing takes place at the Company’s San Bartolomé plant, which is the only largescale commercial oxide plant in Bolivia. The San Bartolomé plant produces silver doré bars. |
Latest News | Andean Precious Metals Reports Q4/FY 2023 Results; Meets 2023 Revised Production Guidance March 27, 2024 |
Source:
p. 10
The Andean Precious Metals Corp. owns a 100% interest in, through direct and indirect interests, Empresa Minera Manquiri S.A. ("Manquiri") which is the operator of the San Bartolomé mine and processing facility, near Potosì, Bolivia.
Andean produces silver primarily through contracts with the state-owned mining company, Corporación Minera de Bolivia (“COMIBOL”). Pursuant to a production agreement, the Company currently pays production royalties to COMIBOL in return for the rights to mine, transport and process mineralized pallacos from the Santa Rita, Huacajchi and Antuco sectors.
Contractors
- Subscription is required.
Deposit Type
- Tailings
- Vein / narrow vein
- Epithermal
- Breccia pipe / Stockwork
Summary:
The mineral deposits at San Bartolomé are alluvial and colluvial, surficial accumulations of silver- and tinbearing unconsolidated material, which were derived from erosion of Cerro Rico, a prominent +4,700 meter elevation mountain, and accumulated down-slope filling depressions, gullies and low-gradient areas. Locally they are called “pallacos” which also includes reworked Sn-bearing gravel deposits called “sucus” and “troceras”. Mineral deposits at Tatasi-Portugalete are man-made, dumps adjacent to underground mine portals of ancient and current mines.
San Bartolomé
The mineral deposits at Cerro Rico are the source of the San Bartolomé pallacos and are high sulfidation epithermal in character, composed of veins, stockworks, hydrothermal breccias and irregular bodies, hosted in a very altered resurgent dome of dacitic- to rhyodacitic-composition porphyritic intrusion emplaced in Middle Miocene time (approx. 14 mya). The pallacos were derived from the erosion of the Cerro Rico hydrothermal ore deposit and were emplaced around the mountain crest by recent geologic processes. These deposits consist of an unsorted mixture of cobbles and boulders in a sandy clay matrix, accumulated down slope by colluvial and alluvial processes, filling depressions, gullies and low-gradient areas. They cover an area of over 5 km2 in size. Geologically, the true thicknesses of the pallacos range from <1 m to nearly 75 m. The deposits have been grouped into three areas named Antuco ........
Summary:
The Qualified Persons note that mining of the pallacos at San Bartolomé has been conducted with shallow open pit methods using dozers, and backhoe or loaders and transports the material to the processing facility by truck (Birak et al, 2020). No drilling or blasting is needed to extract these unconsolidated, mineralized deposits (gravels). These methods have been used continuously since start-up at San Bartolomé in 2008. The Company has used similar methods to recover dumps and plans to utilize the same methods to recover the dumps at Tatasi-Portugalete. The Qualified Persons believes these mining methods are appropriate for the future operations at both sites.
Mining methods for new mineral resources within the FDF have not yet been determined but are part of studies to determine the technical and economic viability for mining and recovery of Ag and Sn from the tailings.
Ore is mined from the Company’s permitted mineral reserve areas:
- The San Bartolomé mine (“pallacos”).
- Dump areas at Tatasi-Portugalete and El Asiento.
The project utilizes conventional surface mining methods to extract colluvial, and alluvial materials mine dumps, oxide and sulfide tailings and other materials named pallacos and sucus and troceras (collectively, the “pallacos”), which have been identified in the Huacajchi, Santa Rita, Diablo (Norte and Sureste areas – now referred to as Antuco) - Pallacos Areas.
An exclusive mineral purchase contract ........
Source:
- subscription is required.
Flow Sheet:
Summary:
- subscription is required.
Source:
- subscription is required.
Reserves at December 31, 2022:
Pallacos mineral resources are reported using the following Ag cut-off Grades: Antuco: 62.9 g/t Ag, Huacajchi: 58.1 g/t Ag and Santa Rita: 61.5 g/t Ag.
A nominal cut-off of US$25/t has been used for reporting the Tailings mineral resource.
A nominal cut-off of US$25.00 per tonne has been used for reporting the mineral resources at the Stockpiles.
Category | OreType | Tonnage | Commodity | Grade | Contained Metal |
Measured & Indicated
|
|
2.319 Mt
|
Silver
|
91 g/t
|
6.77 M oz
|
Measured & Indicated
|
Stockpiles
|
10.148 Mt
|
Silver
|
50 g/t
|
16.2 M oz
|
Measured & Indicated
|
Stockpiles
|
10.148 Mt
|
Tin
|
0.12 %
|
11.93 kt
|
Inferred
|
|
0.347 Mt
|
Silver
|
97 g/t
|
1.09 M oz
|
Inferred
|
Stockpiles
|
1.505 Mt
|
Silver
|
48 g/t
|
2.3 M oz
|
Inferred
|
Tailings
|
18.11 Mt
|
Silver
|
43 g/t
|
25.09 M oz
|
Inferred
|
Stockpiles
|
1.505 Mt
|
Tin
|
0.09 %
|
1.33 kt
|
Inferred
|
Tailings
|
18.11 Mt
|
Tin
|
0.16 %
|
28.9 kt
|
Corporate Filings & Presentations:
- Subscription is required.
News:
- Subscription is required.