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ECU Silver Increases Amount of Gold and Silver in the Month of September

posted on Oct 13, 2009 01:03PM

October 13, 2009

ECU Silver Increases Amount of Gold and Silver in the Month of September

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Oct. 13, 2009) - ECU Silver Mining Inc. (TSX:ECU) -

ECU is pleased to report on operations for the month of September. The Oxide Mill had its best performance since start-up and treated 15,545 tonnes of mineralized material at an average rate of 527 tonnes per day. This performance translated into the largest amount of gold to date, being 702 ounces of gold, a 42% increase over the month of August. Silver increased by 7% over the prior month to 13,744 ounces for September.

Revenues will be further enhanced with the recent re-activation of our second mill, the Sulfide Mill. The Company is now operating two mills, the Oxide Mill and the Sulphide Mill. With the significant increase in lead and zinc prices, our sulphide stockpiles have become an attractive opportunity to enhance revenues. In September, the Sulphide Mill treated i) 4,124 tonnes of mineralized material to generate 48 tonnes of lead concentrate grading 9.1 g/t gold, 5,780 g/t silver and 28% lead, ii) 42 tonnes of zinc concentrate grading 1,077 g/t silver and 43% zinc and iii) 315 tonnes of gold/pyrite concentrate grading 18.61 g/t gold and 161 g/t silver. The lead and zinc concentrates will be sold to smelters and most of the 188 ounces of gold contained in the gold/pyrite concentrates will be treated further, resulting in additional dore bars after roasting and leaching.

For the month of September, the operations are best explained by dividing the month in three equal 10 day parts, i) from the 1st to the 10th, ii) from the 11th to the 20th, and iii) from the 20th to the 30th. The first part was focused on testing mill feed with raw gold/pyrite tailings, the second was characterized by adding low grade stockpiles with added feed from the gold/pyrites tailings and roasted gold/pyrites and the third was dominated by 91% of higher grade material directly from the mine. The results are shown below in Table 1.

Table 1 - Gold and Silver Dore Fabrication
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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                   Dore Bars          Kg         Gold (oz)      Silver (oz)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sept 1-10                  9       188.8              153            2,396
Sept 11-20                16       331.1              211            4,396
Sept 21-30                22       453.1              338            6,951
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total                     47       972.9              702           13,744

The most important aspect of the September operations was that the last 
third of the month completed all the testing and as such represented:

- a steady mine feed of higher grade material to the Oxide Mill, and
- revenues per tonne that significantly exceed the operating costs per 
  tonne over that period.

Our objective is to further improve the revenue stream from two additional feed sources, i) the roasted gold/pyrites, and ii) gold/pyrite tailings where a treatment circuit is now being constructed.

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