Zinc

[Lone Clone]

Peru Copper says finding more zinc at Toromocho
Wed May 23, 2007 8:24pm ET16

http://yahoo.reuters.com/news/articlehybrid.aspx?storyID=urn:newsml:reuters.com:20070524:MTFH79045_2...

LIMA, May 23 (Reuters) - Peruvian miner Peru Copper (PCR.TO: Quote, Profile , Research) (CUP.LM: Quote, Profile , Research) said on Wednesday it hoped to confirm the discovery by the end of this year of a significant zinc deposit at its Toromocho copper project in central Peru.

The company's vice president Angel Alvarez told Reuters its miners started to find zinc in the northern and southern stretches of the deposit in December last year.

"We're exploring the south and north, where the zinc, silver, gold and copper content is at its highest," he said at a mining conference in the Peruvian capital Lima.

"This raises the prospect of additional reserves which we hadn't counted on before."

Peru Copper has said Toromocho, in Junin province, could become one of biggest copper mines in Peru by 2010, producing 300,000 tonnes of refined copper a year.

Alvarez said the zinc deposits were significant enough for the company to believe it might be extractable through open cast mining, although more drilling needed to be done to determine the ore grade.

"We're looking at more than 200 million tonnes of mineral with possible grades for copper of 0.5 percent, for silver of 10 grams and for zinc of possibly 0.6 percent in the new areas in the south of the project," he said.

Peru is one of the world's biggest metal producers, ranking in the top five for output of silver, copper, zinc and gold.