Expansion initiatives gel for Sherwood

Sherwood Copper Corp., less than a year after commissioning its copper-rich Minto Mine in central Yukon, appears to be firing on all cylinders with production, expansion and exploration initiatives.

The Vancouver, B.C.-based miner May 14 reported discovery of new areas of copper-gold mineralization in the first holes drilled in its 2008 exploration program in previously unexplored terrain west of the Minto and Area 2 reserves. Sherwood expects to spend C$4.4 million on exploration at Minto this year, including about 20,000 meters of drilling.

Sherwood said core from 13 holes drilled to date evaluated the potential of a large area west of Minto and Area 2 that is covered with a thick layer of semi-frozen overburden that precludes the use of conventional soil geochemical and geophysical techniques successfully used elsewhere on the property to discover new deposits. Sherwood said several holes drilled in the Upper Minto Valley intersected moderate to high grades of copper mineralization, similar to other deposits on the property.

Second mill commissioned

Sherwood also recently completed the addition of a second ball mill and flotation capacity that could boost daily mill throughput at Minto by more than 50 percent to 2,400 metric tons from 1,563 metric tons after grappling with installation problems and unusually cold weather earlier this year.

The company mined 1.69 million metric tons of material in the first quarter of 2008 containing 321,430 metric tons of ore and milled 152,370 metric tons of ore averaging 3.61 percent copper, 1.73 grams per metric ton gold, and 14.8 g/t silver to produce 11.3 million pounds copper and 63,440 ounces silver. Sherwood does not assay the gold and is awaiting a report on that output.

With a second mill on line, Sherwood expects to produce 55 million pounds of copper, 262,100 ounces of silver and 24,000 ounces of gold in 2008. That compares with output in the latter half of 2007 of about 10 million pounds of copper, 43,550 ounces of silver and 2,290 ounces of gold.

Sherwood's subsidiary, Minto Explorations Ltd., also made its first principal repayment March 31 of $4.925 million under its project loan facility. "Having achieved design performance and, given the exceptional grade and current very high metal price, Sherwood is looking forward to a very robust performance in 2008 and beyond," said CEO Stephen Quin. "During the next few months, we aim to continue to optimize operational performance of the Minto Mine while, in parallel, looking to the implementation of the Phase 3 mill expansion."

Kutcho exploration begins

Sherwood and its recently acquired subsidiary Western Keltic Mines Inc. launched a 12,000-meter drill program in late April at the Kutcho copper-zinc project in Northwest British Columbia. The companies said the drill program objectives are to better define the higher grade, shallower resources to support a feasibility study that will focus on higher grades in the early years of a proposed open pit mine, and to collect samples for feasibility level metallurgical test work of a simplified, lower cost, conventional flotation recovery circuit.

Sherwood also recently arranged financing for the work with a $10 million revolving credit line with Macquarie Bank as well as an oversubscribed non-brokered private placement of 1.2 million flow-through shares at $6 each for gross proceeds of $7.23 million.

The company said it is ready to move Kutcho to a production decision. Sherwood is considering redesigning the Kutcho project following the model of Minto, which is a smaller, less capital-intensive open-pit operation focused on high-grade mineralization.