First Silver Concentrate Produced at San Vicente's Facility

VANCOUVER, BC - Pan American Silver Corp. reported that the new processing facility at its San Vicente mine in Bolivia began producing silver and zinc concentrates on March 25, 2009.
Pan American has a 95% interest in the San Vicente mine, which is located in the Potosi department and is operated as a joint-venture with Bolivian state-owned COMIBOL. Over the past several years, mining operations at San Vicente were conducted on a limited basis, where ore was trucked to a small third party mill for processing. Given the discovery of the high grade Litoral vein system, Pan American decided in mid-2007 to invest in constructing its own processing facility and to increase the production rates.
Construction of a 750 tonne-per-day processing facility and expansion of the underground mine started in September of 2007. After 16 months of intense work, plant commissioning began in mid-January 2009 and is now close to completion. The Company expects San Vicente to reach design capacity within the next few months. The total investment to expand San Vicente and build the new processing facility is estimated to be $70 million.
Commenting on San Vicente's expansion, Geoff Burns, President & CEO said: "This is another major accomplishment for Pan American's construction and development team. Despite the challenges posed by an extremely remote location, and the intense competition for construction and mining supplies during much of the build, we have completed San Vicente's expansion on schedule and within 10% of the original budget. With our own plant and expanded mining capacity, I am confident that we will now begin to realize the full value of the San Vicente ore deposit."
Burns added: "Only two weeks ago we inaugurated the Manantial Espejo mine in Argentina. Now with San Vicente's new processing plant in operation, we are right where we planned to be, setting ourselves up to produce 21.5 million ounces of silver this year.
The company’s address is 1500-625 Howe Street, Vancouver, BC V6C 2T6, (604) 684-1175, fax: (604) 684-0147, email: [email protected].