Trevali Mining Corporation, a Canadian mining company, has commenced zinc and lead-silver concentrate production from the metallurgical plant at the Santander mine in Peru.

The miner stated that all the circuits of the plant comprising crushing, transfer, four grinding mills, flotation and tailings are all operational and undergoing commissioning and optimization.

Commissioning process at the mill has been categorized under two shifts with processing stock-piled mineralized feed during day-shift and fine tuning the plant and optimizing the reagent schemes and run criteria following each run during the subsequent night-shift.

Trevali president and CEO Mark Cruise said that the commencement of metal concentrate production at Santander mine marks a significant milestone for the company.

"This milestone is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the Trevali – Glencore construction teams as well as our contract partners that continue to play a vital role in our success," added Cruise.

The company currently has 156,945 tons of mineralized material grading 4.9% zinc, 1.2% lead, 0.22% copper and 1.5 ounce per ton silver available for commissioning.

"We now aim to ramp-up operations to the planned 2,000-tonne-per-day throughput," Cruise revealed.