Pasinex Resources (CNSX: PSE) Moves into Production at Pinargozu Zinc Project Located in Turkey with the Help of Joint Venture Partners
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By Dr. Allen Alper, PhD Economic Geology and Petrology, Columbia University, NYC
on 5/19/2016
Pasinex Resources Ltd (CNSX: PSE) has moved into zinc production at their high grade, low cost Pinargozu mine located in Turkey, which is supplying funds for exploration. Steve Williams, President and CEO of Pasinex, who is a specialist in base metals and zinc deposits, tells Metals News how his company made a strategic shift in the last two years. Pasinex went from just exploration to starting their underground mine with Turkish joint venture partners, producing zinc and expanding. With production starting, Pasinex Resources Ltd is starting to see cash move in their direction.
Steve Williams, President and CEO of Pasinex Resources (CNSX: PSE), was interviewed by Dr. Allen Alper, Editor-in-chief of Metals News to update readers on the ingenious path they have taken toward funding the exploration of the Pinargozu zinc mine located in Turkey.
Mr. Williams is a specialist in base metals and zinc deposits. He said, “I’m a metallurgist from the Western Australian School of Mines. I’ve worked in mines in Canada, Chile and Mongolia. Pretty much all of my technical career has been in base metals and carbonate zincs and some gold. I have an MBA from Tulane in New Orleans. That has given me my business training. I have gone from technical to business management. My last job was Managing Director of SGS in Canada with about 1300 employees. I left them and did what I always wanted to do, put a junior together.”
Mr. Williams said, “The big story is that the mining industry is going through a tough time, a really tough time for juniors particularly. It has been extremely hard and nearly impossible to raise equity. We are blessed with a high grade mineralization at our Pinargozu project in the south of Turkey. We realized that going in, before we mined it. In the process of drilling it and building a resource, we recognized that we have the opportunity for an underground mine. So that is what we have done! Over the last two years, we have gone from probably nothing to starting underground and getting some adits.”
The company has now moved into production and is expanding. Mr. Williams said, “We opened up a couple of underground mining faces and we started mining at twenty five tons per day. We started, this year, at six mining faces and we just increased that to eight mining faces. We are now mining at sixty tons per day. It is all high grade. It is all direct shipping zinc, running around 35% zinc so it is a very high grade material. It is fantastic material! It is an oxide, a zinc carbonate mineral, but that grade! Anything above 25% zinc you can sell directly, so that is what we are doing. We are mining it, we truck it on down the road about an hour and a half, we crush it and then we sell it. The port is about another hour away from there. So it is ready to market because it is low cost and it is not a big trucking distance.”
The company moved into production due to the fact that they had a hard time raising capital. Mr. Williams said, “We got in and we did it and we made that decision because we had an ore body that permitted us to do that. With the market – we couldn’t raise equity – so we took it into our own hands and it is working out very well. Each month, we are mining sixty tons a day. We now have 120 people working underground at the mine and we are actually going to open up more mine spaces. We are doing a lot more underground development and hopefully later on in the year there will be an opportunity to go even higher in mine production. It has been great because I don’t know what else you do when you get tough times.”
Mr. Williams is happy with how the geology looks at the mine. He said, “On the geology, this is a carbonate type replacement zinc deposit similar to the types of deposits that you see in Mexico and Peru. Also, there are quite a few of these types of deposits through Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan. There is this belt of carbonates and carbonate replacement deposits through that area. I’m getting excited about the geology. We are in a high grade oxide area. We are starting to see a few sulfides and we have actually mined a few sulfides, so we are starting to find sulfides. We are starting to believe there are sulfide roots here. I think as we go deeper and do a bit of drilling, there is a definite opportunity of opening up a bigger sulfide deposit. We have come in on something that I think is geologically exciting.” The company was able to move forward with the help of a joint venture partner. Mr. Williams said, “From where we were to where we are now is all about our partners. We are in a joint venture partnership where they have equipment and people and access to people. They have the desire to get in and do things. Having a great team is fundamental to being able to do this.”
Dr. Alper commented that what Mr. Williams had been able to do was amazing and he should be commended. This would have been a great accomplishment in the best of times. Mr. Williams is clearly an innovative entrepreneur, a savvy businessman and a highly skilled manager.
With production starting, the company is starting to see cash move in their direction. Said Williams, “This is a joint venture, so within the joint venture company, we are starting to see a positive cash flow. We are seeing 1500 to 1800 tons per month of sales in the joint venture company. It will take some time for that money to flow back to the partner companies. We went into this, when we founded the company in 2012, with the classic model of all juniors - where you do some drilling and get some results and raise money in the market and you do the PEA and all that. It was obvious, after a few years with share prices going down, equity investment going down and people not wanting to invest, that we had to make a strategic shift and it was difficult. We had a deposit with high grade zinc. There are costs going into production and things you have to line up. But, we did it because that is what we had to do.”
http://pasinex.com/
36 Toronto Street,
Suite 1000,
Toronto, Ontario, M5C 2C5
+1 416 861 9659
Tel +1 416 861 9659
Steve.williams@pasinex.com
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