VIDEO: Coeur Mining to grow silver production with $1.7bn acquisition of Silvercrest
Adding Las Chipas makes Coeur a top silver producer in North America, with 21 million ounces of silver and 432,000 ounces of gold annually.
Canadian explorer Silverton Metals (TSX-V: SVTN) plans to buy the Margaritas gold-silver property in Durango, Mexico, from fellow junior Zapata Exploration.
Under the deal, the Vancouver-based company will acquire all issued and outstanding shares of Zapata’s Mexican subsidiary Impulsora De Proyectos Mineros.
The Margaritas property consists of two concessions: Margaritas and Ampliacion las Margaritas, totalling 500 hectares. Highlights of the property include an under explored, high-grade epithermal gold-silver deposit hosted in productive volcanic rocks of the Sierra Madre Occidental.
Silverton CEO John Theobald said the company was excited about the acquisition of the Margaritas property because it contained a high-grade gold vein open in all directions with visible gold and the potential to be a bonanza-grade deposit.
“Both the environmental permit application and community agreement process have already commenced, which have given the company a head start on the exploration of the project,” Theobald said.
“[The asset’s] mineralogy suggests that the gold could be easily extracted by gravity and leaching methods,” he noted.
Silverton plans to rehabilitate roads, refine mapping and sampling, and ready the project for drilling before the end of the year.
The company already has a project in the state of Durango: Pluton. The asset is in the same district as the past-producing La Ojuela mine lying along strike to the south of Pluton, and Excellon’s (TSX: EXN) Platosa silver mine to the east.
