Underground precious metals producer Hochschild Mining reports that it has received approval from the Peruvian government for the construction of a mill at its 60%-owned Inmaculada advanced project.

This represents the completion of the final stage of the project’s construction permitting process, with commissioning on track for the fourth quarter of 2014.

Hochschild CEO Ignacio Bustamante says the company can now proceed with the final key construction stage of its flagship growth project. “This is in line with our projected schedule and we expect construction of the plant to commence immediately,” he notes.

Further, Bustamante adds that the project is set to deliver seven-million attributable silver-equivalent ounces a year.

“I am also confident that the resources will grow significantly from the current excellent starting point, in the same manner as our Arcata and Pallancata mines, in Peru and San Jose, respectively, in Argentina, and see Inmaculada develop into one of our most important operations,” Bustamante says.

Inmaculada is a 20 000 ha gold/silver project located in Hochschild’s southern Peru cluster, about 210 km south-west of Cuzco and 530 km south-east of Lima. The project is also situated 112 km from Hochschild’s Pallancata operation.

International Minerals Corporation, which is also Hochschild’s joint venture partner at the Pallancata operation, holds the remaining 40% of the Inmaculada mine.

Further, the property consists of 40 min-ing concessions and is characterised by both low and high sulphidation epithermal mineralised systems, hosted by veins, breccias and disseminations within tertiary volcanics.

The processing plant is now set to start construction, with the project’s total initial capital expenditure maintained at $370-mil-lion for a 3 500 t/d underground operation and total average yearly production of 12-million silver-equivalent ounces from the single Angela vein.

The project is set to be the company’s lowest cost operation and will also require no addi-tional central administration cost.

Hochschild strongly believes that the mineable resource base will be expanded significantly by upgrading the inferred mineral resources in the south-west and north-east extensions of the Angela vein.