Time Lapse Video of SilverCrest Mines’ Santa Elena in Construction

By Doug Hadfield, ResourceIntelligence

(Editor’s Note: These videos were created from time-lapse photography. Construction is still in progress. Check back regularly at www.resourceintelligence.net to watch as the videos are completed through July 2010.)

There’s a new gold-silver mine being built in northern Mexico. It’s not often that you have the opportunity to see a mineral resource project literally move to production, but I’ve had a front row seat on the action. Pundits often exclaim that just one in ten thousand exploration projects ever make the journey from exploration to extraction, so I count myself lucky to have been able to watch SilverCrest Mines’ Santa Elena mine in construction daily via video link.

Not long ago, the Santa Elena mine was little more than a twinkle in the eye of SilverCrest’s management team, headed up by President and CEO Scott Drever and COO Eric Fier. The company picked up the project in 2006. It was a terrific deal by any measure; about million to acquire the project, which in four years has become a producing, 0 million dollar gold and silver mine with an IRR over 100%.

Investors who have held onto SVL.V shares are now being rewarded for their patience. Like the foundations of the mine itself, the stock has surged upward to over per share and appears to be moving toward the .84 to .13 price target range given by various analysts. As recently as the end of February, veteran analyst Greg McCoach told investors, “SilverCrest remains a BUY.”

If there was ever any doubt about Santa Elena going to production, it should be swiftly put aside. What assurance the footage here doesn’t give, certainly the project’s numbers do. The mine is scheduled to reach commercial production in the fourth quarter of this year with the 2,500-tonne-per-day facility expected to produce approximately 35,000 ounces of gold and 600,000 ounces of silver per year over a 7-year mine life at an estimated life-of-mine cash cost of less than US5 per ounce of gold-equivalent. Even if gold doesn’t hold its ground, Santa Elena will produce at a profit back to 2004 gold prices.

The onsite camera offers us a link from anywhere in the world, in real time, to the mine site, seven kilometres (4.3 miles) from the town of Banamichi (pronounced ban-AH-michi), a few hours drive from the US border.

At first, the daily collection of images showed little: Construction trucks creating roads, moving soil to create a broad undulating field.  Over the course of a few weeks, distinct shapes begin to take form out of the desert landscape: the field will become a compact heap leach pad (See the video: Heap Leach Pad). In another section of the project, foundations are poured and crushers are lowered into place by a crane. Eventually there will be a three-stage crushing system on site to reduce the mined rock to fragments from which gold and silver will be extracted.

Once the mine is constructed, the ore is crushed in three stages: First it is crushed to 80% passing a 15-centimetre screen in a primary jaw crusher (See the video: Primary Crusher. So far, only the concrete foundation is in place). Ore from the primary crusher is then conveyed to the secondary crusher, where it is further crushed. This happens again at a third crusher (See the Video: Tertiary Crusher, and remember: The foundation has been poured, but crusher is not yet in place).

Now the ore granules are small enough to be leached. The ore is delivered to the leach pad, where it is piled. The leach pad is underlain by a thick plastic liner, which is underlain by (see the video: Heap Leach Pad) about a half metre of impermeable compacted clay (see video: Clay Conditioning).

SilverCrest Mines uses a proven environmentally sound method to extract the gold from the ore. A low-concentration cyanide solution, comprised of a compound of carbon and nitrogen, is applied to the ore on the leach pad using an irrigation sprinkler system. The resulting gold-bearing solution percolates through the heap and eventually will be pumped to the Merrill-Crowe plant where gold and silver will be recovered from solution by precipitation with zinc powder.

Sometime by about Q4 this year, dore bars (a combination of gold and silver) will be produced on site and transferred to a third-party refinery for final recovery of gold and silver, providing significant cash flow to the company.

Crucial to what makes SilverCrest such a highly regarded investment among the investing cognoscenti is what will remain behind on the leach pad. According to analyst Jay Taylor, we can “look forward to additional economics from a high percentage of the considerable amount of gold and silver left from leaching, because 35% of the gold and up to 70% of the silver is not expected to be recovered in the heap-leaching process.” Down the road, much of that material will be recovered at minimal cost for additional cash flow.

Then there are the underground prospects for Santa Elena. Resource investors should know that just a fraction of the total resources here are slated for open pit production. The company plans to expand the resource once production begins and eventually mine the remaining tonnage using underground mining methods, which will add to the present seven year mine life.

Upside comes in several forms for SilverCrest. Once the company has reprocessed the heap leach and mined the open pit and underground portions of the resources, there is still the nearby 100% owned Cruz de Mayo project with 12.9 million ounces silver inferred and 2.3 million ounces silver indicated. It’s possible that the ore from Cruz can be economically shipped to Santa Elena for crushing and processing.

And as SilverCrest makes good on its promise of near-term production at Santa Elena, the company is actively seeking other acquisitions in northern Mexico. This team has been incredibly successful in bringing Santa Elena to production. If just one in ten thousand grassroots projects becomes a mine, the odds are greatly improved by a team that already has a track record of finding and building mines.

To learn more about the Santa Elena mine, visit SilverCrest Mines site video here. Resource Intelligence is one of the world’s foremost resource investor websites, with revolutionary investor calculators, video, financing information, conference planners, resource estimate updates, news and more. Calculate the per share value of thousands of projects at any metal price. Watch in depth interviews and site videos. Read all the resource news that’s fit to print. Invest better at www.resourceintelligence.net

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