ALUMBRERA

MINING

Located at an elevation of 2,600 metres, the Alumbrera open pit mine is situated on a 600 hectare mining lease near Belen in northwestern Argentina, 1,100 Kilometres northwest of Buenos Aires.  The lease encompasses all mineralized areas of the deposit. Immediate mine infrastructure and other mine facilities cover an additional permitted surface area of 5,200 hectares

Standard truck and shovel mining techniques are employed in the open pit mine, utilizing 42 cubic metre shovels and 220 tonne haul trucks to move both ore and waste. Mining is carried out on 17- metre benches, with 2-metre sub-drill, and ore is hauled to processing facilities nearby.

Current mineral reserves have a low waste to ore ratio of an average of 2:1 for the 2007 life-of-mine plan.  Operation of the mine is carried out at an elevated cut-off grade, which is reduced over the mine life to the economic cut-off grade.  This practice requires that some ore be stockpiled for later processing.

The mining rate in 2007 was slightly under 300,000 tonnes per day for a total of approximately 109 million tonnes of material mined, comprised of approximately 26 million tonnes of ore and 84 million tonnes of waste.  The total material mined is planned to average 312,000 tonnes per day, approximately 114 million tonnes per annum for 2008-2010.