April 19, 2011
Vancouver, BC - Taseko Mines Limited (TSX: TKO; NYSE Amex: TGB) (“Taseko” or the “Company”) announces first quarter production, on a 100% basis, of 19.2 million pounds of copper and 316,000 pounds of molybdenum for its 75% owned Gibraltar Mine.
Russell Hallbauer, President and CEO of Taseko, stated, “First quarter copper production was hampered by harsh winter conditions in January and February and by an unscheduled four day maintenance down.
While severe winter weather also affected construction of the SAG direct feed system, ore will be delivered to the new system at the end of this week to begin commissioning. The new feed system will eliminate the current secondary crusher bottleneck and increase Gibraltar’s daily milling capacity by more than 20% over that achieved in 2010, especially in winter conditions.”
Mr Hallbauer continued, “Engineering and procurement of the Gibraltar Development Plan 3 (GDP3) investment is well underway. All major mining and milling equipment has been secured and delivery schedules are set. Construction activity will commence in May, with commissioning scheduled for December of 2012.
Molybdenum recovery at Gibraltar continues to improve and is now approaching an average of 40%, up from the 25% achieved in 2010. This is a strong indication that the new molybdenum plant being built as a component of GDP3 will add appreciably to total molybdenum metal production as a result of recovery improvement as well as increased throughput.
An updated Gibraltar reserve model is scheduled to be completed by the third week of May. It is anticipated that a significant portion of our 500 million tons of resources can be converted into the reserve category, considerably increasing total copper and molybdenum metal production in our long term mine plan.
Once GDP3 is complete in December 2012, Gibraltar will have production capacity of 180 million pounds of copper and 3 million pounds of molybdenum annually for the life of the mine.”
For further information on Taseko, please see the Company’s website www.tasekomines.com or contact: Investor Relations - 778-373-4533, toll free 1-877-441-4533
Russell Hallbauer
President and CEO
No regulatory authority has approved or disapproved of the information contained in this news release.
This document contains “forward-looking statements” that were based on Taseko’s expectations, estimates and projections as of the dates as of which those statements were made. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “outlook”, “anticipate”, “project”, “target”, “believe”, “estimate”, “expect”, “intend”, “should” and similar expressions.
Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the Company’s actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These included but are not limited to:
For further information on Taseko, investors should review the Company’s annual Form 40-F filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission www.sec.gov and home jurisdiction filings that are available at www.sedar.com.