Jim Williams, chief executive of Mexico-focused Arian Silver (LON:AGQ, CVE:AGQ), said today he hoped the dispute concerning ore processing at the San Jose mine would be resolved "as soon as possible".
Williams said he was travelling to Mexico tomorrow for talks with the toll mill owners."Whilst I'm down there, I can get better clarity on the situation," he said.
As revealed in an earlier statement today, processing ore has been stopped at the site for the time being because of a dispute with the plant’s owners.
As Arian has previously made clear, the toll milling operation at San Jose, in Zacatecas state, is designed to be a pilot operation to test the potential for a larger scale commercial operation and the mill is contracted to process the ore from this trial mining.
In February this year, the firm began a study to assess the cost and benefits of a bespoke milling plant at San Jose.
It believes this will lead to significantly increased efficiencies, including recoveries, of silver, lead and zinc at a significantly reduced cost.
The results are expected to be received within the current reporting quarter, Arian said today.
In the three months to March this year 24,394 tonnes of material were milled - an average 267 tonnes a day.
That was up 15 per cent over the same period a year earlier and 6 per cent higher than the previous three months.
Silver production in the first quarter totalled 66,688 ounces of silver, up 44 per cent over the comparable period.
This afternoon, Arian shares were down 16 per cent, to change hands at 11.75 pence each.