South American Silver Corporation announced the commencement of the summer drilling program at the Escalones copper and gold project in Chile. The first drill started turning on December 5th at hole ES-36 located on the Meseta in the central porphyry area of the deposit. The summer program is designed to fill gaps in the resource model in order to expand resources in the porphyry and skarn environments and to test part of the large magnetic anomaly identified by the 2011 geophysical surveys. The planned program includes over 10,000 meters of diamond drilling and will continue through March to April 2013, weather permitting. It is intended that a resource update based on the new drilling will be completed in mid 2013.
In addition, the first program of metallurgical testwork on Escalones material has been completed at SGS Laboratories in Ontario. A second program which will be reported in early 2013 is underway. Flotation and leaching testwork carried out to date has shown positive results. The standard sulphuric acid leach test achieved average copper extraction of 77% from mixed copper oxide sulphide mineralization. Copper flotation is also proving successful and rougher and cleaner flotation testing of the porphyry material achieved 25-34% copper concentrate grade at high recovery. The thrust of metallurgical testing is to use conventional sulphuric acid and flotation methods although the company's patented chloride leach has also been tested. The patented leach averaged 100% extraction of the copper and 57% of the gallium on both oxide and sulphidic mineralization but with high reagent consumption.
Mr Phillip Brodie Hall president and CEO of South American Silver said that "We are very pleased to be drilling again after the winter break as we are eager to increase and upgrade resources at Escalones. We are especially excited about the prospect of testing the magnetic anomaly as this has the potential to bring new resources into the model. Also, the metallurgical test results are promising and show that flotation of a saleable concentrate from the porphyry material is likely to be straightforward. This is very good news."
