Trevali Mining reported in mid-August the start of production of zinc and lead-silver concentrates at the Santander mine in Peru. The crushing, transfer, grinding, flotation, and tailings circuits were all operational and undergoing commissioning and optimization.
As part of the commissioning process, the mill was processing stock-piled mineralized feed during day-shift and fine-tuning the plant and optimizing the reagent schemes and run criteria following each run during the subsequent night-shift as required. The company had 156,945 mt of mineralized material grading 4.9% zinc, 1.2% lead, 0.22% copper, and 1.5 oz/mt silver available for commissioning.
The plant is ramping-up to its planned 2,000-mt/d throughput.
The underground Santander mine is located about 200 km by road northwest of Lima. The project is being developed under an agreement between Trevali and Glencore International, whereby Trevali retains 100% ownership, while Glencore has built and is operating the processing plant to produce zinc and lead-silver concentrates. Glencore is also responsible for supervision of the contract mining operations and has entered into a long-term concentrate off-take agreement for 100% of Santander’s concentrate production.
