Lundin Mining Announces Mineral Reserve Estimate for New Candelaria Orebodies

Lundin Mining (TSX:LUN) reported maiden mineral reserves for two recently discovered orebodies at its Candelaria project. The orebodies are known as Susana and Damiana, and are located to the immediate south and below the current open pit.

As quoted in the press release:

• Maiden underground Proven and Probable Reserves at Susana and Damiana consist of 14.9 Mt at average grades of over 1.0% copper
• The new underground Reserves are expected to be accessed from existing and new portals from the open pit and will form important additions to the current underground operations
• After adjusting for the effects of mining depletion and refined economic parameters, the updated open pit Mineral Reserves reflect an increase of approximately 24% (or 66.3 Mt at 0.58% Cu) from the previous estimate dated at Dec. 31, 2013
• Of this 66.3 million tonnes, 27.9 million tonnes (at higher grades of 0.68% copper, 0.16 g/t gold and 2.31 g/t silver) are from the new Susana and Damiana orebodies
• The increased open pit and underground Mineral Reserves are expected to result in approximately three years of additional mine life for the Candelaria operation

Lundin Mining president and CEO, Paul Conibear, said:

We are very pleased that in a short amount of time we have been able to deliver meaningful additions to the Mineral Reserves at Candelaria. With ten drills currently active on step out drilling across the five different underground orebodies, we continue our aggressive 2015 exploration program, the results of which will be included in our third quarter corporate Reserve and Resource update. These results and efforts from ongoing mine planning will form the basis of our optimized Candelaria district mine plan which is expected to be released in the third quarter of this year.

Click here to read the Lundin Mining (TSX:LUN) press release