Silver and zinc production in near future for Abcourt Mines

Patience is a virtue Renaud Hinse, president of Quebec-based Abcourt Mines (ABI-V), has nearly perfected over the last 15 years while waiting for silver and zinc prices to rise so he could put his mine back into production.

The Abcourt-Barvue property was taken out of production in 1990 because of low commodity prices. Since 2002 the price of zinc has increased from below US40 per lb. to as high as US$2 per lb. with more than a US$1 increase in the last year alone. Silver too has jumped from just over U$4 per oz. in 2002 to more than US$13 per oz. recently.

And with a revised 1999 feasibility study nearly complete, Hinse said construction of a new mill and cyanide and flotation plants should be underway by 2007.

“The date was changing continually,” said Hinse. “We wish the delay had been shorter but that’s life.”

Financing and permitting will start in the New Year and Hinse expects commercial production to begin within two years. The mine life is estimated at 10 years with possibility for extension.

The Abcourt-Barvue property, 60 km north of Val-d’Or, has spent more time out of production than in.

The Barvue property now the eastern portion of Abcourt-Barvue was operated as an open-pit mine from 1952 to 1957, producing 3,200 tonnes per day.

Abcourt Mines already owned the adjacent property and acquired Barvue in 1983, naming the adjoined properties Abcourt-Barvue. After spending $20 million on development, the mine went into production from 1985 to 1990. Ore was extracted from underground and then hauled by trucks to a mill in Matagami, 250 km away. Abcourt produced 697,000 short tons of ore grading 3.84 oz. silver per ton and 5.04% zinc, representing 2.67 million oz. silver and about 35,000 tons of zinc.

Recently the foundation of the former Barvue Mines mill was found to be in such good condition that Abcourt Mines might use it for the new mill.

“There’s not a crack (in the foundation). I was driving in Montreal the other day and looking at the overpasses and they’re all cracked,” said Hinse.

Hinse said using the old foundation could save Abcourt Mines $100,000.

“It’s not so much the money as the time,” said Hinse. “If we want to start in the winter, pouring concrete then is not as easy.”

The milling process will include the cyanidation of ore to recover most of the silver and gold, a zinc flotation to recover zinc and some silver and then a flotation of pyrite to produce non-acid generating tailings.

In the 80s, silver flotation was done first, said Hinse.

“By doing the silver first we were losing quite a bit of zinc,” said Hinse.

One plus of the pyrite flotation process is that an impervious dam is not needed, saving the company about $5 million.

The pyrite flotation process is relatively new so Abcourt is conducting further tests before adding the results to the feasibility study.

The ore at Abcourt-Barvue is found in several ore shoots over a distance of 2.2 km in a major corridor of deformation that runs across the property in an east-west direction. The mine has barely been explored below 300 metres, though other mines in the region have reached depths as low as 2,000 metres.

Open pit measured and indicated resources are 5.1 million tonnes with a grade of 46.7 grams silver per tonne and 3.3% zinc for a total of 7.7 million oz. silver and 169,000 tonnes of zinc.

The underground measured and indicated resources total 1.4 million tonnes with a grade of about 101 grams silver per tonne and 3.4% zinc.

There are also 1.5 million tonnes of inferred resources with a grade of about 120 grams silver per tonne and 2.98% zinc.

Abcourt Mines has a few other properties: the Vendome-Barvallee property 11 km away from Abcourt-Barvue, with gold, copper, silver and zinc; the Elder gold mine just outside of Rouyn-Noranda, which is in the middle of a 7,000-metre drilling program; plus the Tagami gold property and newly acquired Aldermac copper-zinc property, both near Rouyn-Noranda.