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NOVEMBER 28-DECEMBER 4, 2016 / VOL. 102 ISSUE 50 / GLOBAL MINING NEWS · SINCE 1915 / $3.99 / WWW.NORTHERNMINER.COM
Alexco hopes Bermingham will drive Keno Hill revival SITE VISIT
| Two silver discoveries could bring sustainable production
Lundin to sell Tenke stake to Chinese PE firm for US$1.1B COPPER
| Move lowers political risk, gives Lundin felxibility, analysts say BY TRISH SAYWELL tsaywell@northernminer.com
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Alexco Resource’s president and CEO Clynton Nauman (left) and vice-president of exploration Alan McOnie pause on the way up Galena Hill to explain historic operations at the Hector-Calumet mine at the Keno Hill silver property in the Yukon. PHOTO BY MATTHEW KEEVIL BY MATTHEW KEEVIL
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mkeevil@northernminer.com KENO CITY, YUKON
olling into Alexco Resource’s (TSX: AXR; NYSE-MKT: AXU) Keno Hill silver camp outside of the long-standing — though now sparsely populated — mining hamlet of Keno City in the central Yukon is a living lesson in history. The local museum houses industrial relics and antique equipment that tell the silent stories of a half-century of large-scale silver production that ended in the late 1980s, while Alexco’s modern camp is juxtaposed by the fading
remnants of the empty town of Elsa. Alexco’s goal since acquiring the land package in 2006 has been to revive the prolific district, and it hopes that a pair of discoveries will pave the way to sustainable production. The company took a brief run at restarting operations in 2011 when it began pulling ore from the Bellekeno silver mine, but by 2013 it had announced the “interim suspension of operations,” due to rising operating costs and falling silver prices. During a walk through Alexco’s quiet flotation mill, president and CEO Clynton Nauman says that the real upside for Keno Hill has always been exploration, and the
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company’s geological team has never stopped combing the 230 sq. km district for discoveries. In fact, Alexco nearly built its processing facility on top of its next potential source of mill feed, the Flame & Moth deposit, which the company found while shutting down operations three years ago. We leave the mill and Nauman points out preliminary work on a portal to develop the first 25 metres of a new underground production ramp. Flame & Moth hosts indicated resources of 1.4 million tonnes grading 516 grams silver per tonne, 0.42 gram gold per tonne, 1.7% lead and 5.7% zinc. Contained silver is nearly
23 million ounces. Mineralization comprises multi-phase quartz and siderite veining, developed within a broad host fault structure. Locally it contains massive galena, sphalerite, pyrite and pyrrhotite, with associated silver sulphosalts, arsenopyrite and chalcopyrite. “Our focus has been on the eastern end of the district, and we believe it is the key to restarting production,” Nauman says. “Our Bellekeno mine is located there, and we had expected Flame & Moth to anchor future operations because it appears to be a much larger deposit. So we were
ix months after Freeport-McMoRan (NYSE: FCX) agreed to sell its 56% stake in the Tenke Fungurume copper-cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to China Molybdenum, joint-venture partner Lundin Mining (TSX: LUN; US-OTC: LUNMF) has struck a deal to sell its 24% interest in the mine to a Chinese private equity firm, BHR Partners, for US$1.14 billion. Lundin’s president and CEO Paul Conibear stated that while it was “a difficult decision,” given the company’s 20-year history at Tenke, See LUNDIN / 2 PM40069240
See ALEXCO / 2
unturned.
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