VANCOUVER - Guanajuato Silver Company Ltd. [GSVR-TSXV; GSVRF-OTCQX; VAQ-FSE] has discovered high-grade gold and silver material in an historical tailings area at the wholly owned El Cubo mine complex in Guanajuato, central Mexico.
A 43,000-square metre, 1.0-1.5-metre thick layer of high-grade surface material has been identified from a retired tailings facility named Mastrantos IV. A total of 134 shallow drill holes, totalling 220.5 drilled metres (holes to approximately 2-metre depth), were completed at Mastrantos IV this year; the best results included drill hole No. 164 grading 727 g/t silver equivalent (AgEq) over 1.2 metres and drill hole No. 166 grading 711 g/t AgEq over 1.0 metre. Over 95% of the drillholes encountered significant mineralization.
The majority of this mineralization exists as free-gold. The company has tested several different gravitational separation procedures in order to extract the gold and silver from this material. Final assessments on the exact method the company will use to process this material will be decided upon shortly.
James Anderson, Chairman and CEO, said, "Our intention is to add additional silver and gold concentrate production through an independent gravity separation circuit. This will allow us to expand overall production at El Cubo without interfering with the regular flow of material through our processing facility. GSilver's ability to identify and then rapidly act upon this opportunity is demonstrative of the technical quality of our Mexican operating team. Going forward, we plan to investigate and subsequently exploit similar development opportunities that we believe exist within the Guanajuato mining district, where processing of precious metals has been ongoing for over 450 years."
The Mastrantos IV tailings facility is located approximately 3km from the El Cubo mill and had an operational history dating principally between 1986 to 2003, during which time the price of gold generally traded below US$400 per ounce. Also, most of the Mastrantos IV material comes from El Cubo's Santa Cecilia area which at that time was encountering bonanza gold grades. These combined circumstances may have contributed to the low gold recoveries and the high-grade values left in the tailings.
The target area at Mastrantos IV is a gold and silver mineralized layer starting at surface and extending to approximately 1.5 meters in depth.
The El Cubo Mine has been in almost continuous operations for the past 200 years. GSilver will continue to investigate additional opportunities for tailings reprocessing from other tailing facilities located on its properties - many of which pre-date Mastrantos IV.
Guanajuato Silver mines and processes silver and gold concentrate from its El Cubo mine and mill. The company continues to delineate for additional silver and gold resources through underground drilling at El Cubo and its nearby El Pinguico project. Both projects are located within 11km of the city of Guanajuato, Mexico, which has an established 480-year mining history.