Neves-Corvo mine (SOMINCOR, Portugal) is one of the most important underground mines now operating in Europe. It treats a heterogeneous massive sulphide deposit, which is mainly copper and/or tin rich. The extracted ore is processed to obtain two types of concentrates (Cu and Tin) whose purity is affected by some minor (As and Sb) and trace (Hg, Se, Cd) elements. In addition to the concentrate sales, silver is also commercialized as a bonus product. The present work intends to identify the mineral bearer of some of these additional detrimental or bonus elements, and to develop a mineralogical model for predicting mineral processing production profits. Many laboratory-scale tests were conducted to study the behavior of minerals: the different steps and conditions of these tests allow good reproduction of the industrial flotation process of the Neves-Corvo mine. The statistical analyses of the elemental distributions give interesting results and provide the ingredients from which we can produce a preliminary predicting tool. Thus, fahlores-minerals (tetrahedrite and tennantite), which are considered to be veritable toxic trash minerals, can be easily localized during the process. This will allow their separation by modifying the flow sheet to improve the concentrate quality. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.