Endeavour Silver Corp. (TSX:EDR,NYSE:EXK) announced that this week the 1,000-tonne-per-day ball mill at its Bolanitos mine experienced an unplanned outage due to a motor problem. The company anticipates the motor being repaired in two to three weeks, and does not expect a “material impact on production.”

As quoted in the press release:

The Bolañitos plant will continue to operate at 600 tpd during the repair period, and the downtime should not impact the expected Bolañitos mine output for the year because management previously guided the Bolañitos mine production would reduce to 1,000 tpd by mid-year.

The outage may have a minor impact on forecast production in the second quarter from the El Cubo mine, located in the same district of Guanajuato as Bolanitos, because El Cubo is currently in the middle of a mine expansion from 1,500 tpd to 2,200 tpd. The additional mine tonnes were planned to be trucked for processing to the Bolañitos plant to take advantage of its available capacity. These additional El Cubo tonnes will now be stockpiled for processing in the third quarter.

The El Cubo mine expansion is well under way, recording 7 days in excess of 2,000 tpd in May. A second mining contractor will commence work shortly to facilitate the mine expansion to 2,200 tpd. The El Cubo plant was optimized in the first quarter and is now operating well above its original design capacity of 1,500 tpd.

Click here to read the full Endeavour Silver Corp. (TSX:EDR,NYSE:EXK) press release.

Endeavour Silver is a mid-tier silver mining company focused on growing production, reserves and resources in Mexico. Since start-up in 2004, Endeavour has posted ten consecutive years of accretive growth of its silver mining operations. Endeavour’s three silver-gold mines in Mexico combined with its strategic acquisition and exploration programs should facilitate Endeavour’s goal to become a premier senior silver producer.