The Business Year Special Report
Graham Donald Carman, President & CEO, Tinka Resources
Tinka Resources seeks to optimize zinc mining in Peru when it starts production, focusing on improvements to the project.
What are the advantages of mining in Peru in comparison to other countries in Latin America?
There is a great deal of mineralization and many different types of deposits. We have copper, zinc, gold, silver, and more. It resembles Mexico; there are many opportunities. Peru has a world-trusted trade mining code. The government has been stable for a long time, and for the last few years Peru has had a stable currency as well.
When your mine starts production, do you expect it to play a key role in helping boost zinc exports?
I expect production to fall, and when things start to improve, zinc will also recover. If we look at the
London Middle Exchange, zinc is in fact fairly low in ventures. Zinc is seeing a 10-year low, though this is mainly due to the global sentiment. Once the sentiment improves, we expect to see a dramatic shift in prices. It will be the perfect timing for us, and we will likely start production in 2023.
What next steps is the company taking to start production in this project?
The project is at a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) level. We have another year of optimizing the project before we are going to pre-feasibility. There are improvements to the project that we need to make. We want to expand the resource more in 2021, and with the PEA we can make improvements to that. This year will be focused on resources expansion, cement-filled drilling to improve the resource, and PEA. Next year, we have some options. We will push to a PFS or we will continue waiting for the market to recover. We are fortunate that we have raised funds recently through Buenaventura, the largest mining company in Peru. It acquired 19.3% of shares for CAD16 million so we are fully funded for the next year and a half.
“Zinc is seeing a 10-year low, though this is mainly due to the global sentiment. Once the sentiment improves, we expect to see a dramatic shift in prices.”