U.S. Canadian Minerals Inc. Acquires Additional Mineral Rights Concessions in Ecuador
Wednesday, April 13, 2005 19:33 ET
LAS VEGAS, Apr 13, 2005 (BUSINESS WIRE) --U.S. Canadian Minerals Inc. (Pink Sheets: USCA) acquired 13,877 acres of land in Ecuador near its Yellow River and Santa Fe processing plants. There are a number of existing mineshafts on the land from which gold-bearing ore has been produced. The company expects to renovate the shafts as necessary and to begin producing gold-bearing ore within three months.
The company expects to extract gold and other precious metals from the ore from these new concessions in its own processing plants. The aggregate capacity of these plants, currently 200 tons per day, is expected to be great enough to accommodate all the ore from the company's newly acquired concessions and all the ore presently being produced from the American Shaft, in which the company has only a minority interest. The company does not have sufficient information to predict the initial or full amounts of ore that the new concessions are capable of producing, or when, if ever, such production will increase from initial levels.
It is expected that capital expenditures of $60,000 will be necessary to commence production from the new concessions. The company plans to finance these capital expenditures.
In order to prevent the newly acquired concessions from reverting back to the government, the company must spend $1 per hector exploiting the mineral rights during the next two years.
The company's CEO, Rendal Williams, said: "We wanted to acquire some additional mineral rights to complement our processing capacity. The beauty of processing ore that we own at plants we own is that we get all the gold produced, not just half of it, as is the case when we process ore that someone else owns. These new concessions are within 15 miles of our Yellow River plant and are even closer to our Santa Fe plant."
SOURCE: U.S. Canadian Minerals Inc.
U.S. Canadian Minerals Inc., Las Vegas
Rendal Williams, 702-433-8223