10 hours ago
EV Resources appoints new mining executive to Mexico antimony project
EV Resources has appointed senior executive Miguel Barahona as president of its wholly owned Mexican subsidiary Stibcorp de SA de CV, which holds the company's 70 per cent interest in the Los Lirios antimony joint venture in Oaxaca, Mexico.
The appointment comes as EV Resources is laying out a work program to restart its Los Lirios open pit antimony project, which includes site selection for a pilot processing plant and clearing and sorting broken material in two previous production mine pits.
The Los Lirios mine comprises four licences enclosing 1652 hectares – or more than 1.65 square kilometres – with all the licences being located in the district of Zapotitlan Lagunas in the northwest of Oaxaca State.
Barahona is a senior mining executive with more than 35 years of international experience in Latin America and Australia, heading up a wide range of mining sectors.
He is fluent in English and Spanish, and holds a master's in mining engineering from the Colorado School of Mines. Barahona's expertise has embraced exploration, development, operations and project delivery from start-up through to production.
Professionally, his key roles have included chief executive officer, chief financial officer, general manager and project manager with direct involvement in underground and open-pit environments.
Barahona has managed contract mining operations in Australia with Thiess Pty Ltd, which contributed to record-setting productivity and safety performance. He is an expert in mine valuation, feasibility studies, stakeholder engagement and capex/opex optimisation and has a strong record of delivering projects under budget and ahead of schedule.
EV Resources research has led it to appreciate that there are few opportunities for large-scale antimony mining operations, which can be quickly brought online to meet a widespread need for a low-cost supply.
The company's research into the antimony supply bottleneck, and its choice of Mexico as a likely geological and acceptable mining jurisdiction for antimony production, follows its research into secure, low-cost jurisdictions with small-scale mining expertise.
EV Resources says that two grab samples taken in the Los Lirios 3 pit seven years ago by the Mexican Geological Survey, which were assayed at the survey's laboratory in Oaxaca state, delivered 62 per cent and 62.99 per cent antimony, respectively.
The company does not hold out the results as representative of the operation's potential mineralisation but they do offer encouragement that significant mineralisation exists and can be accessed in a near-surface environment.
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