Hi Wannabe!

I do not pretend to speak on behalf of ECU, or consider myself close to management. I have met with management on numerous occasions in the past, and have never had any problem getting to speak with them or having emails answered, but as far as I know every other investor is also welcome to contact them and get a reply.

I have been to tour the existing mine operation. There is a 300 tpd mill at Velardena which is 100% owned by the company, and the recovery circuit is through floatation cells. The company also completed a small acquisition of a 100 tpd mill a year or two ago, that was running a gold-pyrite circuit, however there was a problem with arsenic in the concentrates that rendered it difficult to sell to a smelter. That is also part of the reason why Dan Kappes was brought in to assist with the metallurigical issues. I have never heard reference from the company of any capacity to process 1500 tpd, so if you read on some forum that we have that size of mill, then I would be very skeptical of the source.

To answer your question, the tailings from the floatation cell circuit, plus the gold-pyrite concentrates, will be run through the new 500 tpd mill to generate a dore product. This is not pure silver or gold, but a mix of the two, plus some other minor metals that also settle out, like copper. The dore is sold to a smelter at much higher net relative to spot prices, so it is more valuable for ECU to produce this product. Also, I believe the new mill will allow the company to solve the issue of arsenic contamination. Since they could run the large gold resource that is sitting in tailings and produce a gold product that is free of contaminants, the new mill opens doors that were not available options in the past. I would expect that the total production capacity will amount to 300tpd of sulphide ore in the floatation circuit, plus 500 tpd of tailings and concentrates from the 100tpd gold pyrite circuit, for a total of 800 tpd potential production.

I work as a consultant for Investor Relations with other companies, and I know that it is awkward for management to reply directly on a public forum to investor questions. My advice is that if you have specific questions, contact the company directly.

ECU can certainly continue on indefinately as an independant company. There is always the potential for a major to make a hostile acquisition bid to take over the entire operation. And there is also the potential that at some time in the future some sort of transaction will occur that will enable a friendly deal for a much larger development program than ECU would be capable of funding on their own. I do not know how things will go in the future, so I make my investment decisions based on what is logical and in line with the facts as I know them. I doubt very much that we will ever receive a dividend from ECU, since mining is so capital intensive and the company has not yet demonstrated recurring earnings. At the end of the day, the resources that have been defined so far would certainly appear to be eoncomic for a much larger operation, and sometime down the road I think we will end up either bought out by a major, or owners of a smaller chunk of a much larger mine, through a merger or JV. Neither outcome is less likely as a result of this new mill acquisition.

I suppose it is always possible that ECU may do a deal to buy back refined silver and sell it in retail bars. Personaly I think that would be a mistake. If silver prices finally break out and run to $20 or $30 or $50... who cares if the company is making a small profit from marketing silver? By then the stock would probably be worth 10 times what it currently is valued at, and the operations would churn out huge cash flow and profits. That is why I own the stock and continue to accumulate.

All of the above is strictly my personal opinion. ECU is a paid advertiser on my website.

cheers!

mike