Tamaya adds to Filipina Grande copper inventory

Tamaya Resources has signed an option to acquire a strategically and commercially...

  Tamaya Resources has signed an option to acquire a strategically and commercially important lease Mina Grande, contiguous with its 100% owned Filipina Grande project in Region III in Chile.Mina Grande has a copper resource inventory based on previous estimates and 4,600m of drilling, of 9 Mt at 0.6% Cu of oxide copper mineralisation overlying about 4 Mt of sulphidic copper-gold-iron oxide mineralisation.Including these mineralisation estimates at Mina Grande, the Filipina Grande project in its entirety now includes an inventory of 27 million tonnes of mineralisation, representing about 250,000 t copper in situ. Tamaya Executive Chairman Mr Hugh Callaghan said that Tamaya views are as an outstanding deal for strategically important ground contiguous to its advanced exploration project at Filipina Grande. “Mina Grande represents good value to Tamaya in a region of growing interest to copper companies. Through the Option agreement, and based on previous estimates, from day one we have the potential to add 177million pounds of copper to our inventory at a price equivalent to around US$0.01 per pound,” Mr Callaghan said. Tamaya will drill Mina Grande as part of the recently announced 140,000m drilling program for 2008/2009; to confirm the Company’s intention to exercise the Option, prove up the resources to a JORC standard, and add additional tonnes and grade to the resource. The Mina Grande drilling program will initially consist of 2,500m over 15 holes, and will run in conjunction with the much larger Filipina Grande campaign over¬¬ the next six months. This early exploration work will focus on verifying historical resources and raising the resource to JORC standards. Following this work, should the Mina Grande inventory be proven to a JORC compliant resource, Tamaya will have added 177 million pounds of copper to the inventory, at a price equivalent to US$0.01 per pound. A series of bottle roll tests will also be performed to test the metallurgy for heap leach characteristics.