NEWS
De Beira Announces the Appointment of an Exploration Manager and the Commencement of Drilling at the Minanca Mining Project in the El Oro Province of Ecuador
Wednesday August 16, 3:51 am ET
PERTH, WESTERN AUSTRALIA--(MARKET WIRE)--Aug 16, 2006 -- DE BEIRA GOLDFIELDS INC. ("DE BEIRA" or the "Company") (OTC BB:DBGFE.OB - News)(FWB: D1Q)(WKN: A0JDS0): De Beira Goldfields is pleased to announce that it has appointed an exploration manager, Mr Julian McDermott, to the large poly metallic Minanca mining property located in the highly productive Portovelo-Zaruma gold belt in the El Oro province of Ecuador. Mr McDermott will oversee the mining and exploration activities for the project, with the objective of increasing the current levels of production. Mr McDermott will also supervise exploration including drilling to increase the resource base to include the mineralised porphyry and stockwork systems which host the high grade veins currently in production.
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De Beira is currently reviewing all geological data within the underground mining operations and dewatering the existing development. Currently the mine is clear to the third level, and will be clear to fifth level in the near future.
Recent sampling of the underground workings and surface grab and trench samples has confirmed the stock work and the porphyry system to host significant gold, silver and zinc mineralisation.
As a result of the encouraging sampling results, De Beira has prepared drill sites for an initial 6,000m drilling program to test the potential of the large mineralised stock work system, and to confirm the previous resource calculations. Drilling is scheduled to begin around the 25 August and De Beira is confident of intersecting significant zones of mineralisation early in the drilling program.
The Portovelo region is host to a 15 km long system of poly metallic epithermal veins. Locally the vein system covers an area approximately 7 km long by 1 km wide, with mineralisation hosted in highly fractured host rocks with quartz and carbonate filling.
The 45-hectare property has been continuously mined since 1845 and mining in the region dates back to the 1600's. Mineralisation on the Minanca property includes gold, silver, copper, zinc and lead occurring in quartz calcite veins within an andesite host rock. The mine has 3 principal veins, varying in widths from 0.6m to 5m and length between 500m and 800m, of which only the Abundancia vein is the focus of current mining activity. This vein system is postulated as originating from dilational fissure openings resulting from the strike slip fault movements associated with the Portovelo Caldera. Numerous stockwork veinlets separate the major veins, and these stockworks are currently undergoing evaluation for an open pit-mining scenario.
Previous production from the mine since 1905 has been estimated at 4.5 million ounces of gold, the bulk of which was mined by SADCO (South American Development Company) between 1895 and 1950. SADCO total production for this period was 7.6 million tonnes at a cut off of 14.4 g/t gold for a total production of 3.6 million ounces of gold and 12 million ounces of silver.
Current underground development consists of 1800m of rail on 3 levels, 400m of drives, a 90m shaft and a 60m shaft. Previous workers developed the mine down to 300m, however current operations are only focussing on the 10m, 20m and 30m levels. In addition there are 14 levels above the principal adit and 30 levels below.
The processing plant is located 3km south of the mine, and is currently utilising 2 ball mills, flotation cells, carbon absorption and electrolysis. The current through put is approximately 5,000 tonnes of ore per month though De Beira intends to increase this to 10,000 tonnes per month in the near future.
No drilling has been carried out in recent times. As part of the future development strategy De Beira intends to fast track drill target definition to test the further depth potential of the current vein systems and simultaneously examine the potential of open pit mining the stockworks. De Beira is currently working on a JORC compliant resource estimate.
DE BEIRA GOLDFIELDS INC.
