Silver Mines strikes visible gold

Silver Mines has struck visible gold for the first time ever beneath its existing Bowdens ore reserve, adding to the prospects of the company sitting on a very significant underground resource as well as the proposed open pit.

The latest assay results reveal more gold and zinc in the system as the diamond drilling program extends south and east at the Bundarra Zone. This sits beneath the largest undeveloped silver deposit in Australia and one of the largest in the world.

Today’s news from Silver Mines’ (ASX:SVL) NSW project comes hot on the heels of eye-watering silver equivalent reported from Bundarra in December and high-grade hits in October.

The run of success is continuing with 1.8m at 1,181g/t silver equivalent (12 g/t silver, 9.46% zinc, 8.36% lead, 0.16% copper and 3.56g/t gold) from 225m. Another of the nine drill holes returned 116m at 0.31g/t gold from 223m including 3m at 327g/t silver equivalent (25g/t silver, 1.43% zinc, 0.91% lead and 2.44g/t gold) from 280m.

Results also showed known mineralisation extending more than 250m south at Bundarra.

More results like this from ongoing drilling could also mean an excellent gold exploration target, both linked to the Bundarra Zone and as a separate mineralisation style associated with silver at depth and to the east.

Silver Mines has three targets directly below the bulk-tonnage open-pit Bowdens ore reserve – Aegean, Northwest and Bundarra Zones, with Bundarra being dominated by wide zones of high-grade zinc and lead mineralised lenses associated with gold, silver and copper.

Recent drilling has focussed on extending the Bundarra Zone south, west and east, while also testing for greater economic underground gold potential.

CEO Anthony McClure told Stockhead: “The main work at the moment is in the Bundarra Zone where drilling results are showing an excellent return.

“As we continue to step out south and east we see a much greater presence of gold and zinc,” McClure said.

“The system at Bowdens is vast and we have a continued program with four rigs on site.

“This area is showing all the hallmarks of a potential underground development.

“Further results will be coming to hand shortly and we plan to have a resource estimate out in the coming months.”

Silver Mines is in the final stages of development approval for a 2-million-tonne-per-annum open pit operation that would have an initial mine life of 16.5 years producing about 66 million ounces of silver, 130,000 tonnes of zinc and 95,000 tonnes of lead.

Its progress at the project comes as analysts forecast massive growth in silver demand in the coming decades thanks to the white metal’s use in clean energy technology such as solar panels.

The drilling rigs on site are currently nearing completion of the 30,000m diamond drilling program targeting high-grade zones under the open pit ore reserve.

Results from this drilling will form the basis for a Mineral Resource Estimate as part of a Scoping Study of underground mining scenarios, which is expected to be completed during the second quarter of 2022.

This article was developed in collaboration with Silver Mines, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.