Amerigo Resources Ltd | Company Profile

About the Company

Amerigo's wholly owned subsidiary, Minera Valle Central (MVC), produces copper and molybdenum concentrates from tailings from the world's largest underground copper mine, Codelco's El Teniente mine, a copper producer for the past 100 years with remaining ore reserves lasting many more decades. MVC is treating all the fresh tailings from El Teniente's present production and has the right to treat the higher grade tailings from a 200 million tonne in situ tailings impoundment known as Colihues that is located next to MVC's plant. In 2007 MVC produced more than 33 million pounds of copper and approximately 639,000 pounds of molybdenum.  Amerigo's goal is to increase production on an annualized basis to approximately 60 million pounds of copper and 1 million pounds of molybdenum.

Minera Valle Central

The MVC site is located 8 kilometers east of the city of Rancagua and 90 kilometers south of Santiago at 700 meters elevation.  MVC currently treats approximately 110,000 to 135,000 tonnes per day of fresh and old tailings from the El Teniente Copper Mine, and produced 33.21 million pounds of copper and 639,020 pounds of molybdenum in 2007.

Fresh tailings are transported to MVC along a 36 kilometer launder, reprocessed, and returned to the tailings launder that deposits into Codelco's Caren tailings deposit 50 kilometers west of MVC.  In addition, nearby is the Colihues tailings pond covering 368 hectares and containing an estimated 200 million tonnes of higher-grade old tailings. It is located 1 kilometer south of the plant.  Amerigo has the right to process these old tailings from Colihues.  Adjacent to Colihues is the Cauquenes tailings deposit, which contains an estimated 500 million tonnes of additional higher-grade tailings.  Discussions are ongoing with respect to Amerigo obtaining the rights to process tailings from Cauquenes.

MVC has negotiated the right to increase the treatment rate of Colihues tailings to 45,000 tpd from the originally contracted 10,000 tpd, and continues to review other opportunities to increase copper and molybdenum recoveries and to decrease costs.  The Company's goal is to increase annualized production to 60 million pounds of copper and 1 million pounds of molybdenum.

Latest News

Amerigo Announces Q4 2008 Production Results

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA – January 30/CNW/ - Amerigo Resources Ltd. (TSX:ARG, "Amerigo" or the "Company") announced today that during Q4-2008 Amerigo produced a total of 9.53 million pounds of copper and 211,729 pounds of molybdenum, compared to 9.52 million pounds of copper and 157,630 pounds of molybdenum in Q4-2007.  The Company will book Q4-2008 copper sales at $1.31/lb. (December 31, 2008 price), compared to Q3-2008 sales which were booked at $2.81/lb (September 30, 2008 price).

The Company's power costs averaged $0.1415/kwh during the quarter, compared to $0.1703/kwh in Q3-2008.

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