By Madelaine B. Miraflor Taiwanese firm Philippine Xin Ye Industry Ltd., Inc. wants to secure deals with more large-scale and small-scale miners for its gold stripping technology, a top official said. The company opened this week its first ever gold stripping facility in the Philippines which uses GP-860 technology — an environment-friendly method of gold stripping that can replace cyanide. Located in Valenzuela City, the US$1-million plant has the capacity to strip 15 tons of ore every day, a rate that would allow the company to produce as much as 750 grams of pure gold daily. In an interview, Xin Ye Executive Vice President Steven Liao told reporters that the company targets to build two more of the same facility, with the same amount of investment for each, next year. These plants, according to him, will be located in Baguio and Camarines Norte where there is significant amount of mining operations. Right now, Liao said the company is in talks with 20 mining companies who are interested to either acquire the GP-860 technology or avail of the company's services in the newly opened plant. In addition to environmental protection, GP-860 speeds up the process of refining gold. Using it, the refined gold does not need to be processed separately, with gold stripping rate at 98 percent. GP-860 also reduced the entire ore to gold process to eight hours compared to the traditional extraction process of two to eight days. Because of this, using the technology can increase the income of a mining company, Liao said. As of now, majority of the mining companies in the Philippines only export raw metals due to high processing cost.