The Company's Cusi Mine is located in Chihuahua State, Mexico, approximately 135 kilometres from Chihuahua City. The Property encompasses 73 concessions covering 11,665 hectares over a range of elevation of 2,000 to 2,500 meters above sea level in the Sierra Madre Occidental Mountain Range.
Although commercial production was declared in January 2013, the Cusi Mine is still considered to be somewhat in the development stage as portions of the mines production comes from development rock within the Santa Rosa de Lima zone. Mill throughput at the Company`s Mal Paso plant increased from 450 to 650 tonnes per day in 2018 and is on-track to reach 1,200 tonnes per day in Q2 2019. In June 2018, the Company released a preliminary economic assessment examined to increase the production rate to 1200 tonnes per day in 2019 and to 2,700 tonnes per day in 2021.
The Mal Paso Plant, located 44 km from the Cusi Mine, uses a conventional crushing-milling-flotation circuit to recover the minerals and to produce commercial quality concentrates. Ore is delivered from the mine to the plant in 20 tonne trucks. Cusi processing facilities include two interconnected process plants, containing conventional ball mill and flotation plants fed from a crushing circuit. The flotation circuit has the ability to produce lead and zinc concentrates.
All permits for the Cusi mine and surrounding exploration properties are in good standing.
Exploration
Exploration at Cusi was focused on the Cusi Fault and the Santa Rosa de Lima vein complex. The Cusi Fault extends on the Company’s property for a length of 12 kilometers. The Cusi Mine lies within the Sierra Madre Occidental Mountain Range and located within the municipality of Cusihuiriachi in the central portion of Chihuahua State, Mexico. In addition to Santa Rosa de Lima vein complex, the Company has been exploring within the San Nicolas Fault and the Border Fault..
Opportunities for further drilling and exploration include:
- Brownfield programs within and close to existing mines to exploit near mine targets that can be converted into resources and reserves and brought into the existing mine plans within a shorter period of time.
- Developing a pipeline of open pit and underground opportunities through a district scale study that incorporates various geological data layers, historical drill hole and mine data.
- Numerous nearby satellite exploration targets which may be drilling and exploration targets.