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Doug Bright
Advance Metals’ recent diamond core drilling has bored through a bonanza-grade one-metre intercept grading an eye-watering 4120 grams per tonne (g/t) silver at its flagship Gavilanes project in Mexico. The result came from just 66.7m depth downhole and formed part of a broader 4.6-metre intercept assaying an impressive 945g/t silver, 1.4 per cent zinc and one per cent lead.
The result represents the highest ever individual silver assay returned from Advance’s drilling program at Gavilanes. The hole was designed to test for extensions below a high-grade hit in a recently drilled diamond hole and has successfully extended mineralisation, which remains open at depth and to the southwest.
Adding another layer of potential value, the same hole also delivered the project’s most significant high-grade zinc-lead intersection encountered to date. A deeper 12-metre zone from 98.5m assayed 21g/t silver, 3.8 per cent zinc and 3.7 per cent lead. The interval also included a richer 5.3-metre core going 36g/t silver, 7.7 per cent zinc and 6.3 per cent lead from 102.7m.
The results point to an expanding polymetallic system at Gavilanes, which lies just 23 kilometres from First Majestic Silver’s world-class San Dimas mine in Mexico’s silver-rich Sierra Madre Occidental Volcanic Belt. That operation has so far produced a massive 745 million ounces of silver and 11 million ounces of gold.
‘The drilling to date has identified high grade silver together with gold, copper, zinc and lead mineralisation.’
Advance Metals managing director and chief executive officer Dr Adam McKinnon
First Majestic’s 2024 technical report on its resource and reserve estimates identified more than 125 mineralised quartz veins across its San Dimas property, with the silver and gold-rich quartz veins traced underground for strike lengths ranging from just a few metres to more than 1.5 kilometres.
Advance Metals managing director and chief executive officer Dr Adam McKinnon said: “At over 4,000g/t silver, GV-26-008 returned the highest individual silver assay grade in Advance’s program to date and one of the best recorded at the project. The hole also returned the highest grade zinc-lead interval encountered at the Project to date, including 5.3 metres at 14% Zn+Pb – highlighting the potential for significant base metal credits as the mineralised footprint grows.”
While silver remains the headline act, recent drilling to the south has also started to outline gold-dominant potential. Three drill holes have all returned gold-focused intersections, with a best result of 2.4m at 2.0g/t gold, 21g/t silver, 1.2 per cent zinc and 2.2 per cent lead from a shallow 14.4m.
The company’s latest successes appear well timed, with Mexico’s long-running mining permitting logjam finally beginning to loosen under President Claudia Sheinbaum.
According to Mexican mining industry body CAMIMEX, the country’s Economy Ministry has now cleared more than 90 per cent of the mining permits within its remit, while environmental authority Semarnat has approved more than 85 per cent of its backlog. The shift is significant for a sector that only last month estimated some US$11 billion (A$15.5 billion) of potential mining investment was being held up by outstanding approvals.
There is, however, an important wrinkle in Mexico’s improving regulatory story. While the permitting door is swinging open for companies that already hold mining concessions, securing brand-new exploration ground remains another matter. Mexico stopped granting new concessions in 2019 and the Sheinbaum administration has continued to take a cautious approach to opening fresh ground.
The change therefore looks more like a controlled thaw than a wholesale reopening of Mexico’s mining sector, with the government clearing bureaucratic bottlenecks around existing projects while retaining tighter control over new concessions.
Not that the distinction should trouble Advance at its key Mexican projects. Its Gavilanes project already comprises 11 mining concessions covering 136 square kilometres and a further seven concessions at its 100%-owned Yoquivo silver project in Chihuahua, all in good standing.
Advance’s maiden drilling program at its 136-square-kilometre project is squarely aimed at growing and converting the project’s existing foreign resource estimate of 2.83 million tonnes at 246g/t silver equivalent for 22.4 million ounces.
The latest results build on a string of previous high-grade silver hits at Gavilanes, including 33.9m at 220g/t silver in one hole and 13.2m at 311g/t silver in another. Advance then returned to the same drill pad and sent its latest headline hole beneath the latter intercept, where it struck the bonanza 4120g/t silver hit.
With drilling ongoing, metallurgical testwork underway and assays pending for a current diamond hole testing further westerly extensions, plenty of interesting newsflow looks to be on the cards.
The company says all results from the current drilling and metallurgical work go towards modelling for a maiden JORC-compliant mineral resource estimate, slated for the final quarter of this year. With a string of high-grade hits now under its belt and a clear path towards a resource, Advance appears to be rounding the corner with considerable pace in Mexico.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: mattbirney@bullsnbears.com.au
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