The Northern Miner: Trevali Nears Commercial Production at Caribou

A recent article in The Northern Miner highlighted Trevali Mining Corporation (TSX:TV) and its 3,000-tonne-per-day Caribou underground operation in northern New Brunswick.
As quoted in the article:

The company is commissioning its 3,000-tonne-per-day Caribou underground operation in northern New Brunswick, and will finish installing a copper circuit there next year.
Caribou has an estimated six-and-a-half-year mine life and will supplement zinc production from Trevali’s wholly owned underground Santander mine in Peru, which has a nine-year mine life and produces zinc and silver-lead concentrates.
Last year, Santander — 215 km northeast of Lima — produced 54.1 million lb. zinc, 30.2 million lb. lead and 1 million oz. silver. Trevali acquired the past-producing Santander mine in 2007 and returned it to production in January 2014. The company bought Glencore’s (LSE: GLEN) 2,000-tonne-per-day mill on a lease-to-own basis and signed a life-of-mine concentrate off-take agreement. Glencore operates the mine and the plant. Glencore also has zinc, lead and copper concentrate off-take agreements at Caribou, the past-producing polymetallic deposit, 50 km west of Bathurst. The diversified resource conglomerate and commodity trader owns 5.2% of Trevali’s share capital.

Trevali Mining President and CEO, Mark Cruise, stated:

We’ve got a strong working relationship with Glencore. They buy all of our concentrate from us and in Peru. Even though we own 100% of the mine, it’s a jointoperation team.
What we’re getting as a small company is access to global mega mining services. Probably no mid-tier companies would ever have that sort of access, never mind an emerging small-cap mining company. Glencore’s involvement is a vote of confidence in the metal and a vote of confidence in Trevali, and helps us derisk, as well.
There are 6 million tonnes in the current mine plan, but SRK identified 10 million tonnes that are mineable, so … we’re going to do a 10,000-metre underground drill program — which is about to kick off — and we’ll do more detailed and infill drilling to convert some of those 10 million tonnes and get more information on them, and that will increase the mine life.
An eight-year mine life is achievable, and we’ll get to 10 years because the current mine plan goes from surface down to 500 metres vertical depth, and one of the first things we did when we acquired it was drill the deepest hole at a 1 km depth from surface, and we hit the main lens within 40 metres of where we modelled it would be. The mineralization continues, so finding more over the short- to medium-term isn’t going to be a technical challenge. It’s relatively easy exploration.

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