Del Carmen Overview
Del Carmen, the Company's flagship project, is a 4-5 hour drive from San Juan city and is located near the southern end of the prolific El Indio Gold Belt.
- 70 kilometres south of the Veladero mine (current and past reserves of 14.7 million ounces of gold at an average grade of approximately 0.8 g/t). Veladero produced 0.96 million ounces of gold at a total cash cost of US$353/oz in 2011.
- 90 kilometres south of the Pascua-Lama development project (reserves of 17.9 million gold equivalent ounces at an average grade of 1.44 g/t, which includes 671 million ounces of silver)
- 20 km southeast of the past producing El Indio mine (4.5 million ounces gold at approximately 8.33 g/t, plus 25 million ounces of silver and 472,000 tonnes of copper).
The Del Carmen concessions total 15,129 hectares. The project hosts two large hydrothermal alteration systems that are the focus of our exploration. The principal target is a Veladero-style high sulphidation epithermal gold-silver system (oxide, bulk tonnage). Read more about Del Carmen geology.
The project lies between 3,700 m and 5,200 m in elevation. As result, exploration activities are typically suspended between mid-May and early October, although mining activities can continue year-around as at Barrick's nearby Veladero mine. In April 2011, we completed our second drill season at Del Carmen and reported an initial inferred NI 43-101 resource for the Rojo Grande area of the project in September 2011 measuring 25.4 million tonnes grading 1.00 g/t gold and 13.3 g/t silver for 816,600 ounces of contained gold and 10.9 million ounces of contained silver. Initial metallurgy showed an average gold recovery of 76.5%, demonstrating the oxide mineralization should be amenable to low-cost heap-leaching as at Veladero.
The 2011/2012 field season at Del Carmen began in October 2011, with an overall budget of $8 million, including drilling, geophysics and Phase 2 metallurgy.
Malbex is earning a 100% interest in the Del Carmen property through an exploration agreement with the Instituto Provincial de Exploraciones y Explotaciones Mineral (IPEEM), an arm's length agency of the San Juan provincial government. The 5 1/2 -year agreement runs from September 2008, and is convertible into a 30-year renewable exploitation license with a 3% royalty to the province and a 2% royalty to IPEEM.
San Juan is the most pro-mining jurisdiction in Argentina, as demonstrated by the commissioning of the Veladero (Barrick), Gualcamayo (Yamana) and Casposo (Troy Resources) mines in recent years and approval for the construction of the Pascua-Lama mine (Barrick). See San Juan map at right in Downloads section for project location.
