Peruvian Metals has an 80 percent stake in the Aguila Norte processing plant located near the Pan American highway, close to Trujillo, Peru’s third-largest city. The plant’s strategic positioning makes it one of the few in the region capable of supporting the many small-scale mining activities and local artisanal mining processes in Northern Peru. This plant can conduct crushing, milling and flotation circuits with an initial systemic processing capacity of 100 tonnes per day.
The plant processed approximately 18 thousand tonnes of minerals for small miners in 2019 and has yielded thousands of highly marketable mineral assets. This processing includes approximately 4,000 metric tonnes of zinc concentrates (averaging 52.4 percent zinc) and over a thousand tonnes of lead-silver concentrates (averaging 52.9 percent and 125 ounces per tonne). The plant was shut down for nearly five months because of COVID-19 restrictions and reopened July 28, 2020. It has achieved over 70 percent plant capacity. As operations expand, Peruvian Metals can increase processing capacity up to 350 tonnes per day under the current permit. This is in conjunction with the forecasted construction of the CIL/CIP gold processing circuit, which the existing plant permit also allows.