Alexander Mining and Firestone Ventures have announced that Firestone has decided to advance investigating the use of AmmLeach® at its Torlon Hill project in Guatemala. Firestone is in discussions with Alexander on proposals for further bench-scale work, column testing and a demonstration test plant designed to asses further the application of the AmmLeach process. This follows on from Firestone’s extensive preliminary metallurgical test-work on the Torlon Hill deposit using a variety of methods.

In June 2011 the summary findings of a study by consultant David Lunt of Stirling Process Engineering, investigating the use of AmmLeach for processing material from Torlon Hill, were announced. The study supported a conceptual flow sheet using the AmmLeach process in a heap leaching, solvent extraction and steam stripping process to produce a zinc oxide product. The adoption of heap leaching would also eliminate the need for milling, agitation leaching equipment and solid-liquid separation. As a result, significant cost savings should be possible using AmmLeach, especially since no on-site acid plant is required.

Martin Rosser, CEO of Alexander, said: “We are delighted that Firestone has selected AmmLeach as its preferred processing method option at Torlon Hill, as well as for other potential Guatemala sources of feedstock. We greatly look forward to working with Firestone to advance its project. ”

Firestone Ventures has first mover status and is the dominant land holder in a historical zinc-lead-silver mineral belt extending for 250 km across Guatemala. Very little modern exploration has taken place in the carbonate belt despite the historical mining of numerous oxide and suphide zinc occurrences on surface.

The first of several compelling zinc occurrences, the Torlon Hill zinc-lead-silver project in western Guatemala, has preliminary 43-101 compliant resources defined from 105 drill holes totalling 8,591 m of drilling to date. A total of 330 Mlb of zinc, 114 Mlb of lead and 978,000 oz of silver has been defined. The deposit is on or near-surface and open for expansion.

A second zinc drill target, the Quetzal property in central Guatemala was drilled in 2010. Several high-grade intercepts including 10 m grading 20.0% Zn, 1.2% Pb and 13.9 g/t Ag were defined. Regional exploration in the central Guatemala zinc belt is a focus for 2011 field crews and several potential zinc drill targets are currently being sampled and under evaluation.