Amerigo Resources Ltd. is an innovative copper producer with a long-term relationship with Corporación Nacional del Cobre de Chile (“Codelco”), the world’s largest copper producer.
Amerigo Resumes Full Production at MVC. (Credit: Dominik Vanyi on Unsplash)
Amerigo Resources Ltd. (TSX: ARG; OTCQX: ARREF) (“Amerigo” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce that Minera Valle Central (“MVC”), the Company’s 100% owned operation located near Rancagua, Chile has resumed normal operations. The MVC plant was reconnected to Chile’s central power grid on July 21, 2023, enabling MVC to resume normal operations processing fresh and historic Cauquenes tailings on July 22, 2023.
“We are pleased to resume normal operations at MVC. I am very proud of the swift response from all members of our team in Chile, which allowed us to reconnect to the power grid as quickly as possible and minimize lost production,” said Aurora Davidson, Amerigo’s President and CEO.
“We took this opportunity to make changes to our infrastructure in a way that should provide additional protection to our operations from another event of this type. The disruption from this climatic event will impact our second and third quarter results but have no lasting effect on Amerigo’s long-term business and the Company’s capital return strategy,” she added. “The quarterly dividend is secure.”
Full production operations resumed on July 22, 2023. As reported in the Company’s news release of July 12, 2023, Amerigo reduced its annual production guidance by 3% to 60.5 million pounds of copper due to the lost production from the flooding. This revised copper production guidance remains in place, and Amerigo’s original guidance of 1.0 M lbs of molybdenum remains unchanged.
MVC lost its connection to the central power grid on June 23, 2023, when three high-voltage power towers owned by MVC collapsed following severe flooding from heavy rains in central Chile. This situation caused a total power outage at MVC. Emergency power supplies took immediate effect to prevent any negative environmental impact from occurring.
MVC quickly secured a secondary power supply, which allowed the plant to process fresh tailings from El Teniente while repairs were completed. While the extensive repairs required to reconnect to the power grid properly were underway, including installing seven new high-voltage towers, MVC successfully produced 90,000 lbs of copper per day from July 6 to July 21, substantially offsetting the negative production impact from the flooding.
Source: Company Press Release