We sat down with Ryan Sharp, CEO of Huldra Silver (HDA.V) to get a quick rundown about the current status of the Treasure Mountain project, after the erroneous report in the Vancouver Sun a short while ago.
There was an article in the Vancouver Sun last week stating that Huldra has been shut down by regulators. Can you elaborate on this?
We issued a press release on November 12, 2012 outlining our current operations. There was some confusion in the press caused by the permanent shutdown of the Magnetite recovery operation on our property but that had nothing to do with our silver project. We had a brief shutdown to complete commissioning and construction activities but we are up and running again and the mill is currently operating 24/7.
Your mill is currently up and running and producing concentrate. Are you currently only putting the high-grade underground of the ore through the mill, or are you blending it with stockpiled ore while you’re fine-tuning the milling operations?
We are currently only running mill feed from the last year of mining through the mill. Once we felt the mill had been commissioned we stopped running the small historical stockpile from development work in 1988.
When do you expect to reach the 200tpd nameplate capacity?
We are ramping up throughput and expect to reach the nameplate capacity in the very near future.
As Huldra is currently milling ore containing in excess of 25oz/t silver (which is 5000 ounces per day when the mill will be operating at full capacity), we expect them to produce approximately 1.5-2Moz of silver per annum for the next three years at an all-in cash cost of approximately $9/oz.
The company will start additional exploration programs to prolong the life of mine, and we also expect them to acquire new properties within the next 12 months to grow their production profile.
Disclosure: The author holds a long position in Huldra Silver Inc. Please see our disclaimer for current positions.
