The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
CS: TSX
President and CEO: Darren Pylot
Senior Vice President and COO: Gregg B. Bush, B.Sc. (Metallurgical Eng.)
Vice President, Exploration: Brad Mercer, P. Geo.
Capstone Mining Corp. is primarily focused on operating, expanding and exploring its assets, including mines or mine projects in Yukon Territory, British Columbia, Mexico and Chile.
The Minto copper-gold-silver mine in central Yukon Territory and the high-grade Kutcho copper-zinc-gold-silver deposit in northwestern British Columbia are Capstone's only properties north of the 60th parallel.
At Minto, Capstone set the 2011 exploration budget at C$12.9 million, including drilling using three rigs.
By July, the company had completed the budgeted program for the year with 49 diamond drill holes covering 16,212 meters in the spring/summer phase of 2011 exploration and a total of 34,004 meters for the year.
With its exploration success at Minto in 2010-2011, Capstone decided to initiate a Phase VI pre-feasibility study that is anticipated to be completed in early 2012 and is aimed at incorporating the Copper Keel/Wildfire area and the Area 2/118 deposit resources - all four areas are now known as the Minto South Deposit - into the reserve base.
It is anticipated that a final resource model for MSD will be completed in the third quarter of 2011 and a new resource estimate generated for inclusion into the Phase VI PFS. While most of the 2011 exploration supported an MSD resource model, additional regional drilling was conducted to test chargeability anomalies generated in a Titan-24 survey in 2010.
With the MSD resource drilling and the 2011 exploration program finished two months early, Capstone considered approving additional funds to continue drilling to test other exploration targets on the property derived from geophysics and geological modeling.
If approved, drilling was expected to resume in late August.
The Minto Mine is projected to produce 39 million to 41 million pounds of copper contained in concentrates at a cash cost of C$1.60 to C$1.70 per pound of payable copper in 2011.
At the Kutcho Project, a new PFS was released in February and the company commissioned a property-wide, high resolution helicopter-borne Versatile Time Domain Electromagnetic survey that was completed in the second quarter, totaled 1,649 kilometers of flight lines spaced 100 meters apart, covering 14,700 hectares (36,324 acres).
A diamond drill program to test anomalies generated by the VTEM survey began in early July and was expected to be completed by the end of August.
Development activities in 2011 are continuing at Kutcho with the goal of obtaining all necessary permits for mine development by mid-2013.
Capstone budgeted C$2.2 million for exploration spending in 2011 on the project and focused on identifying and drill testing geophysical/geological targets identified in the VTEM survey starting with the highest priority VTEM anomalies located in the most prospective geology.
In keeping with its strategy of also growing through mergers and acquisitions, Capstone entered into an agreement in April with Far West Mining Ltd. to merge with the company by way of a plan of arrangement. Concurrently, Capstone entered a strategic partnership with Korea Resources Corp. Far West owns the Santo Domingo Project, a large-scale copper-iron-gold development project located in Region III, Chile, and KORES will assist Capstone in its development.
Cash and short-term deposits: C$506.6 million (at June 30, 2011)
Working capital: C$553.2 million (at June 30, 2011)
Market capitalization: C$1.18 billion (Sept. 7, 2011)
9th floor, 999 West Hastings St.
Vancouver, BC Canada V6C 2W2
Tel: 604-639-0394 Fax: 604-688-2180
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