Latin American Minerals Constructs Heap Leach Pads at Paso Yobai Project

Latin American Minerals Inc. (TSXV:LAT) announced that three heap leach pads and related infrastructure are now constructed and operating at its Independencia mine, located at its Paraguay-based Paso Yobai gold property.

As quoted in the press release:

The Company was pleased to obtain the support of a local Paraguayan bank which provided a USD$700,000 loan in June 2014 to partially fund the construction of the heap leach initiative. The Company is in full compliance with all loan covenants.

During the second half of 2014, the Company designed and constructed:

• an on-site plant to agglomerate gold-bearing saprolite rock with cement in preparation for heap leach processing,
• three 8,000 metric ton capacity reusable leach pads where gold is leached from the prepared mineralization and captured in columns of activated carbon (see Images I and II below), and
• an on-site desorption plant to recover gold from the carbon columns, prior to final on-site smelting.

Miles Rideout, president and CEO of Latin American, commented:

The successful implementation of three pilot heap leach pads and infrastructure is a major step forward in achieving positive operating cash flow and reinforces the local mining support and cost-effectiveness of mining operations in Paraguay. The heap leach operations are now running concurrently with on-going gravity plant gold extraction. With an anticipated increase in pilot gold production, the Company expects to be in a position to continue exploration at Paso Yobai’s large at-surface epithermal gold system.

Click here to read the full Latin American Minerals Inc. (TSXV:LAT) press release.