After Max-Emitter Conversion, 7 New Monthly Production Records Set — Gold Extraction Increases 26%

Conversion to the new Max-Emitter technology at this major gold mine in South America began in April 2003. It takes many months to convert from one type of emitter to another because of the length of the leach cycle, but gold extraction improvements were noticed almost immediately.

Before the mine had converted to 100% Max-Emitter, it set a new monthly gold production record in June 2003 — unusual for a 30-day month. However this record was broken in July and August. Again, because September was a 30-day month, management felt that would be the end of the new records. It was not. Another gold production record was set in September, October, November and December 2003. Seven monthly gold production records set in a row — unbelievable. The mine was so far ahead of their budget gold production in 2003 that they did not sell any gold production from November or December; it was stored until the following year.

After the gold production results for the first quarter of 2004 were released, the company stated that gold extraction had increased 26% compared to the first quarter of 2003 — which was before the use of the Max-Emitter. The gold production increases were valued at hundreds of millions of dollars.

Management subsequently said the first leach cycle gold extraction on the heap leach area was 50 to 55% with the "commodity emitter" and is now averaging 83% after converting to the Max-Emitter. An added benefit: by using some of the Max-Emitter clear tubing to monitor leach solution quality, management can decide whether to reuse the Max-Emitter material a second time to further reduce their emitterline costs — something that definitely was not a possibility with the agricultural emitters.