Trevali forging ahead at Santander

Vancouver – The Santander zinc-lead-silver project, 200 km northeast of Lima, Peru, is coming together quickly for Trevali Resources (TV-C, TREVF-O).

As part of moving forward on a scoping study, Trevali has produced its first resource estimate at the Santander property. It is based on 104 drill-holes, the bulk of which it collared in 2008.

The estimate outlines indicated and inferred resources for three mineralized areas – Magistral Norte, Central and Sur – which are all within 1 km of each other north to south.

All told Trevali has pegged the three areas at 5.3 million indicated tonnes grading 38 grams silver per tonne, 1.27% lead and 3.34% zinc. The inferred category stands at 2.2 million tonnes grading 18 grams silver, 0.5% lead and 2.92% zinc.

Additionally Trevali calculated a resource estimate for the zinc content of nearby tailings from the property’s past-producing Santander open-pit mine. Trevali pegged the tailings at 1.7 million tonnes grading 2.74% zinc.

As part of designing the most attractive project at current metal prices in its scoping study, Trevali says it will focus on the Magistral Norte and Sur deposits as, compared to the Central deposit, they are richest in silver. Magistral Central’s indicated resource, for example, is 1.8 million tonnes grading 45 grams silver, 0.76% lead and 3.84% zinc.

For Trevali, however, it isn’t only the deposits that matters.

In part what attracted the company to the property in 2007 was the existing infrastructure and concomitant potential to fast-track a mining project. The project’s infrastructure is related to the past-producing Santander mine which, operating between 1958 and 1993, produced 8 million tonnes of ore grading more than 7% zinc, between 1% and 4% lead and about 60 grams silver.

Among facilities that Trevali says it is currently modernizing is an ore processing and concentrator plant and the Tingo hydro-electric power station. For the latter facility, which is 17 km to the west of the Magistral deposits, Trevali recently arranged a US$20 million loan to upgrade by nearly eightfold the current 1.2-megawatt generating capacity.

On news of the resource estimate Trevali’s share price held even at 95¢.