Advance sets sights on major Mexican silver-gold resource upgrade

Advance Metals has extensive plans to upgrade its hefty 100 million ounces of silver-equivalent foreign estimates into Australian standard JORC-compliant resources across its trio of high-grade silver-gold projects in Mexico’s Chihuahua and Durango states.

The company says its triple-threat Mexican portfolio has big district-scale upside. It has plans in motion to confirm its known substantial resources, while identifying new high-grade silver-gold extensions.

Advance Metal’s recently acquired Guadalupe y Calvo gold-silver project within Mexico’s world-class Sierra Madre volcanic belt.

The portfolio now spans Advance’s Guadalupe y Calvo, Yoquivo and Gavilanes projects. The company has received an impressive 112,000 metres of diamond drilling data from the projects and seen recent exploration success within the prolific Sierra Madre Volcanic Belt.

Advance says its transformational acquisition of Guadalupe y Calvo in July cemented it as a heavyweight in Mexico’s precious metals arena. The move is backed by extensive drilling datasets and a recent discovery of more than 6350m of drill core that is likely to host substantial, untested gold-silver mineralisation.

The company’s latest efforts to elevate its estimates to JORC-compliant status will continue alongside a renewed exploration push to expand the immediate known mineralisation.

Guadalupe y Calvo sits midway between Yoquivo and Gavilanes and has nearly 86,000m of drilling for a foreign estimate of 9.5 million tonnes at 198 grams per tonne (g/t) silver equivalent for 60.6 million ounces. The project features serious high-grade historical intercepts such as a 6.5m hit running 3.6g/t gold and 3646g/t silver.

Advance is gearing up to upgrade this estimate, focused on updating its cut-off grades, as its metal price assumptions were historically based on US$1700 (A$2600) per ounce gold and US$23 (A$355) per ounce silver. That’s a far cry from the current prices of about double those figures.

The company’s recent 3111m maiden drilling program at Yoquivo has already signalled a string of high-grade hits for expansion, including a 4.87m intercept running 544g/t silver equivalent and broader zones such as 40.6m grading 105g/t silver equivalent.

The promising hits have revealed substantial mineralisation remains beyond the existing estimate of 937,000t of mineralisation running 570g/t silver equivalent for 17.2 million ounces.

The latest discoveries have sparked a sampling blitz of the more than 6350m of untested core, and Advance has 3500m of high-potential core in the lab.

Gavilanes rounds out the resources with 2.8Mt at 246g/t silver equivalent for 22.4 million ounces, plus some minor copper, lead and zinc credits for byproduct potential.

All three projects sit in the Sierra Madre Volcanic Belt, a region renowned for hosting world-class deposits such as Newmont Mining’s Zacatecas project, which hosts well over a billion ounces of silver equivalent.

Advance is crafting detailed exploration programs to unearth its bounty of high-grade silver-gold zones, ensuring a steady pipeline of catalysts to close out the year.

With silver prices recently hitting more than US$40 per ounce and gold soaring to US$3500 per ounce this week, Advance’s timing couldn’t be better.

The company’s dual focus on Mexican silver-gold and its high-grade Myrtleford gold project in Victoria are a perfect one-two combo to ride the precious metals wave.

As Advance pushes for JORC-compliant resources and ramps up exploration, its Mexican portfolio is emerging as a strong two-nation player in the ASX’s precious metals sector, with significant district-scale potential in a prolific belt.

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