In a key-note presentation at ITRI’s International Tin Conference in Penang, Minsur´s CEO Juan Luis Kruger said that the company was boosting exploration and capital expenditure over the next 3 – 5 years with the aim of consolidating its position as a leading sustainable supplier of tin. Key elements in Minsur’s strategy are intensive exploration work in and near the San Rafael mine, a start-up of a planned tailings re-treatment plant, and the removal of an ore-processing bottleneck at the large Pitinga open pit mining operation in Brazil.
The company carried out more than 48,000 metres of drilling within San Rafael in 2013, up by 180% on the previous year which, for the first time in many years, not only replaced the mineral resources that had been extracted by mining in 2013, but also increased the mineral resources by approximately 1 million tonnes. At the end of 2013 the total resource at San Rafael was 216,000 tonnes of contained tin, giving a 9.1 year mine life. This year the plan is to use 8 rigs to drill around 60,000 metres. In addition there are three further significant prospects near the mine that are under investigation, with two at the advanced exploration stage.
Minsur is committing 1.5 – 2.0% of revenues to brownfield exploration over the coming years and also plans $350 – 500 million of “growth capex” in Peru and Brazil. The San Rafael tailings amount to 7.6 million tonnes of ore grading 1.05% tin (80,000 tonnes of contained tin), which, subject to the completion of a positive prefeasibility study this year, could become a low-cost operation with a life of 8 years. At Pitinga, production is forecast to rise by 25% in 2014 and an ambitious capital expansion program is being developed to optimize the current process infrastructure. Also, a prefeasibility study on a “Pitinga Max” scenario is being commissioned with the aim of significantly increasing production in the next 4 – 5years. The life of the mine is over 27 years, based on the current resource of 423,000 tonnes of contained tin.
