Minera Andes / M A I (TSX)

Minera Andes announces the San Jose mine increases silver and gold mineral reserves by 100 percent

SPOKANE, WA, Nov. 26 /CNW/ - Minera Andes Inc. (TSX: MAI and US OTC: MNEAF) is pleased to announce results of a NI 43-101 Technical Report to be filed that includes new mineral resources identified from 2007 exploration drilling, underground development and conversion of 2006 mineral resources into mineral reserves at the San José project in Santa Cruz province, southern Argentina. In addition the report also quantifies areas of mineral potential based on drilling. The San José mining operation is expected to reach full production of 750 tonnes per day (t/d) by year-end and the process plant in commissioning is forecast by Minera Andes to reach full capacity in first half of 2008. The San José project is operated by Minera Santa Cruz S.A. ("MSC") (owned 51% by Hochschild Mining plc ("Hochschild") (HOC.L Reuters, HOC.LN Bloomberg, London Stock Exchange) and 49% by Minera Andes).

Some highlights of the new Technical Report by AMEC Americas Limited (AMEC) are as follows (all amounts are expressed in U.S. dollars, unless otherwise indicated):

- Proven and Probable Mineral Reserves: at June 30, 2007 are: 2.4 million tonnes grading 6.79 g/t gold and 430 g/t silver. The economic cutoff used to calculate the reserves is $94/t (using a price of $500 for gold and $9.00 for silver and taking into account metallurgical recoveries).

- Gold contained: 521,000 ounces of Proven and Probable Mineral Reserves

- Silver contained: 38 million ounces of Proven and Probable Mineral Reserves

- Production: 750 t/day at full production mining rate

- Forecast average operating costs of: $3.92 per ounce silver equivalent

- Mine life increased from 5.2 yrs to 9 yrs

- Forecast average gold production: 64,000 ounces per year at full production

- Forecast average silver production: 3.9 million ounces per year at full production

- Mineral potential was estimated for three targets to total: 1.6-3.4 million tonnes, with 6-10 g/t gold and 200-600 g/t silver

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http://www.minandes.com/s/News…lver-And-Gold-Mineral-...

VG heron

Weiterhin gute Resultate
Minera Andes announces 1.69 oz/ton gold and 37 oz/ton silver from San José drilling

VG heron

Minera Andes Sees No Reason To Panic Over Tax Changes In Argentina

When Rob Davies wrote about Canadian-listed Minera Andes for Minesite last August he made great play of the fact that Argentina had long held great promise as a mining nation but until fairly recently had never quite lived up to expectations. That, he said, was now changing and with Minera Andes leading the charge in taking Argentina from a prospective exploration area to major producer. Minera Andes’ San Jose silver mine started production last summer and all the signs are that there will be more to come. Minera Andes has been both fortunate and persistent in its quest to become a producer. Its persistency is demonstrated by its commitment to Argentina ever since it went public in 2005.
The sad thing is that the new government of Argentina, elected in October last, has undone a lot of the accumulated goodwill by introducing a 10 per cent export tax on existing mines in violation of the Argentinian 30 year tax stability law and three per cent royalty cap, introduced back in 1989. It was the stability law which encouraged investment and activity from mining companies, since, prior to its enactment, any province was free to introduce its own mining taxes and the environmental regime was chaotic. According to Martin Rosser of Alexander Mining, which also has an advanced exploration project in Argentina, at PDAC recently multi-national mining companies such as Barrick and Xstrata were freely threatening legal action against the Argentinian government. What is indisputable is that the politicians have thrown a spanner in the works and it will be some time before they are trusted again by mining companies, investors and bankers.

So how does all this sit with Minera Andes, which has now joined the ranks of the world’s mid-tier silver-gold producers on the commissioning of the San Jose mine in southern Argentina, as a 49:51 per cent joint venture with Mauricio Hochschild & Cia, of Lima, Peru? For a start the president of the company Allen Ambrose is thanking the Almighty that he managed to complete a series of fundraisings totalling C$34.23 million early in February. The gathering storm over sub-prime mortgages made this quite a difficult job, but at least he got it away before the Argentinian government made a nonsense of its own tax laws. The money raised will be used to fund any outstanding share of costs at San Jose, as well as for exploration drilling and completing a scoping study at another of the company’s properties at Los Azules, a copper project in San Juan province.

God certainly seems to be on Allen Ambrose’s side as his company’s shares are currently trading at a slight premium to the price of the units, which also included some attractive warrants. Not many companies, however, can counter the stupidity of politicians with the simultaneous announcement of drilling results that seem sent from heaven. A few days ago Allen Ambrose was able to announce that drilling during the last quarter of 2007 had defined 2.8 kilometres of strike length along the Odin and Ayelén veins that has significant potential to further increase the current reserves and resources at San Jose. The highest grade intercept showed 1.69 ounces per tonne gold and 37 ounces per tonne silver – yes, ounces - over 1.68 metres. The drilling that was completed in 2007 extended the known mineralization along the Odin and Ayelén vein trends by a further 1000 meters along strike, which all added up amounts to a 64 per cent increase in strike length since the 2005 discovery drilling. And still only 15 per cent of the 40 plus kilometres of vein trend target has been explored to date.

Production at San Jose, based on an average 750 tons of processed production per day, is now running at around 64,000 ounces of gold and 3.9 million ounces of silver per year. Mining at that rate gives the project a nine year mine life on current resources But there is much more to come. As Mr Ambrose has pointed out, “The drilling results from the 2007 exploration drilling programme continue to expand the size of the San Jose project. This means that the joint venture operator, Minera Santa Cruz, should be able to double production from 750 to 1500 tonnes per day by the end of this year." If that’s achieved the estimates are that annual output from San Jose will rise to 122,000 ounces of gold, and 6.5 million ounces of silver. Even that rate of mining may be exceeded as a 38,000 meter exploration drilling program, primarily in the immediate mine area, is underway even now to locate new silver and gold resources.

As regards the proposed tax in Argentina, Mr. Ambrose sounds pretty relaxed, pointing out that his company has been operating there for some time and has always been prepared to pay tax on production. He’s certainly not about to join the big boys in any fight against the government and murmurs that there is political risk in operating in any country and political posturing always materialises in face of any changes.

He is much more interested in achieving target production at San Jose by the end of the year, boosting resources and reserves, and starting to drill at the Los Azules copper property, discovered by Minera Andes in 2004. Los Azules has the makings of a sizeable porphyry system and an economic scoping study due to be completed shortly will tell us more. The work carried out there neatly fits the company's business plan of exploration, discovery, development via partnership, and production and profit sharing - a plan that is working remarkably well at San Jose.

Charles Wyatt, minesite.com, March 11, 2008

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VG heron

Weitere gute Resultate

Minera Andes announces 113 meters of +1 percent copper in drilling at Los Azules project

Zitat: Allen Ambrose, president of Minera Andes said, "Drilling results from the first hole of this field season are exciting, since we are drilling at what was thought to be close to the boundary of the mineralized system and we are still in high grade copper mineralization. This appears to indicate that the system is larger than originally thought. Los Azules is evolving as a sizeable porphyry copper target, with a high-grade near-surface copper discovery at its core that is still open at depth and in several directions laterally."

VG heron

132 Meter
Minera Andes drilling cuts 132 meters (433ft) of 1.11 percent copper at Los Azules project

Und zum San-Jose-Projekt gibt es Zahlen von Hochschid.
Zitat:

Das ist viel mehr als im 43-101-Bericht angegeben (Ag 430 gpt, Au 6,79 gpt)

VG heron

Nur ein Gerücht, aber nicht uninteressant, wird inzwischen in diversen Foren diskutiert:

Minera Andes; the latest word looks very good

Word from reliable sources is that Hochschild (HOC.L) has offered Minera Andes (MAI.to) U$250m for the 49% of the San José silver/gold mine that HOC doesn't already own. MAI is holding out for U$300m, but a deal is likely to happen.

MAI.to currently has 188.9m shares outstanding, and 223m fully diluted (most options/warrants are in the money). So if we use the fully diluted count, $300m would work out at U$1.35 cash per share, which is extremely sexy for a company currently quoted at $1.37 (in loonies). Minera would then have the cash on hand to move forward seriously on its wholly owned Los Azules copper project, also in Argentina, that has been returning very good drill results recently. Minera has other exploration-stage project in the region, too.

quelle

VG heron

Weitere Fortschritte beim Los Azules Projekt
Minera Andes drilling cuts 217 meters (712ft) of 0.77 percent primary copper mineralization at Los Azules project

VG heron

Minera Andes Reports San Jose Production Cash Costs At $322/Oz Gold And $6.16/Oz Silver

VG heron

Was meint ihr dazu ?

Minera Andes reports San Jose production cash costs at $322/oz gold and $6.16/oz silver
15:29 EDT Tuesday, August 12, 2008

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TSX: MAI
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SPOKANE, WA, Aug. 12 /CNW/ - Minera Andes Inc. (TSX: MAI and US OTC: MNEAF) announced details of production cash costs (in US dollars) at the San José mine for the second quarter of 2008. The San José project is operated by MineraSanta Cruz S.A. ("MSC") and is owned 49% by Minera Andes and 51% by Hochschild Mining plc ("Hochschild") (HOCM.L: Reuters and HOC LN: Bloomberg -London Stock Exchange). Hochschild is the operator of the project. For the second quarter, production cash costs averaged $322 per ounce of gold and $6.16 per ounce of silver. As previously reported in our July 30, 2008 news release, metal prices for sales of metal in Q2 2008 on a weighted average basis were $901 per ounce of gold and $16.47 per ounce of silver.

The production cash costs are shown on a co-product basis and are defined as the sum of the geology, mining, processing plant, general and administration costs divided by the number of ounces of gold and silver produced at the mine. Production cash costs include royalties, refining and treatment charges and sales costs are applied to doré but concentrate sales do not include refining, treatment charges and sales costs. Depreciation is not included in the production costs. The production cash costs are calculated using the value of the 12,410 ounces of gold and 1,093,291 ounces of silver produced in the form of doré, precipitates, and concentrates and the cost to produce those ounces as defined above ($10,727,957). Our co-product reporting is based on the Q2 2008 average London PM fix for gold and the London fix for silver.

The San José mine is at full production of approximately 750 tonnes per day, but is being expanded to double the production rate to 1500 tonnes per day by year-end 2008. A total of 60,603 tonnes of ore was mined in the second quarter with an average grade of 7.56 grams per tonne gold and 681 grams per tonne of silver.

Allen Ambrose, president of Minera Andes said, "The San José mine is producing high grade gold and silver ore from an underground operation. This means, we move fewer tonnes to produce an ounce of gold or silver which in turn helps us maintain lower costs per ounce. We anticipate that production costs will trend even lower as the production is doubled and we receive the benefit of the economies of scale from the expansion."

Allen V. Ambrose, Minera Andes' President, who is a "qualified person" as defined by National Instrument 43-101, is responsible for the information used in this news release and has supervised the preparation of the information and reviewed all information used in this news release.

Minera Andes is a gold, silver and copper exploration company working in Argentina. The Company holds about 304,000 acres of mineral exploration land in Argentina including the 49% owned San José silver/gold mine that commenced production last year. Minera Andes is also exploring the Los Azules copper project inSan Juan province, where an exploration program is underway to define a resource and scoping study. Other exploration properties, primarily silver and gold, are being evaluated in southernArgentina. The Corporation presently has 189,456,935 shares issued and outstanding.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures: In this news release, we use the term "production cash cost." The production cash costs are calculated on a co-product basis and are defined as the sum of the geology, mining, processing plant, general and administration costs divided by the number of ounces of gold and silver produced at the mine. Production cash costs include royalties, refining and treatment charges and sales costs applied to doré but the concentrate sales do not include refining, treatment charges and sales costs. Depreciation is not included in the production cash costs. We use production cash cost per ounce as an operating indicator. We provide this measure to our investors to allow them to also monitor operational efficiencies of our mine at San José. Production cash cost per ounce should be considered as Non-GAAP Financial Measures and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for measures of performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. There are material limitations associated with the use of such Non-GAAP measures. Since these measures do not incorporate revenues, changes in working capital and non-operating cash costs, they are not necessarily indicative of operating profit or cash flow from operations as determined under GAAP. Changes in numerous factors including, but not limited to, mining rates, milling rates, gold grade, gold recovery, and the costs of labor, consumables and mine site operations general and administrative activities can cause these measures to increase or decrease.

This news is submitted by Allen V. Ambrose, President and Director of Minera Andes Inc.

Caution Concerning Forward-Looking Statements:

This press release contains certain "forward-looking statements", including, but not limited to, the statements regarding the Company's strategic plans, evolution of mineral resources and reserves, work programs, development plans and exploration budgets at the Company's San José Project. The forward-looking statements express, as at the date of this press release, the Company's plans, estimates, forecasts, projections, expectations or beliefs as to future events and results. Forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties, and there can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate. Therefore, actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. In particular, there can be no assurance that production capacity at the San José mine will be successfully increased, that resources and reserves at the San José mine will be increased. Risks and uncertainties that could cause results or future events to differ materially from current expectations expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, factors associated with fluctuations in the market price of precious metals, mining industry risks, risks associated with foreign operations, the state of the capital markets, environmental risks and hazards, uncertainty as to calculation of mineral reserves and other risks. We refer readers to the risk factors and uncertainties described in the Company's continuous disclosure record, a copy of which is available under the Company's profile atwww.sedar.com . Minera Andes' joint venture partner, a subsidiary of Hochschild Mining plc, and its affiliates do not accept responsibility for the use of project data or the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Note to U.S. Investors:

Soweit mal danke.

G4ruß Jürgen

Zitat von Jürgen

Was meint ihr dazu ?
(...)

Eine einfache Antwort gibt's da nicht. Als Produzent ist MAI von Hochschild abhängig, die Gewinne aus der Produktion werden zunächst nicht ausgezahlt sondern in die Absicherung und den Ausbau der Produktion gesteckt. Das läuft so auch bei anderen Hochschild-Projekten, zB auch beim JV mit Exmin. Außerdem hat MAI Schulden, und es wird dauern bis die abgezahlt sind. Aber MAI ist auch ein Explorer und hat ein unglaublich gutes Kupferprojekt, das sicherlich noch für reichlich Kurspotential sorgen dürfte.

VG heron