Prime Mining (PRYM.V) is determined to add value to its Los Reyes gold-silver project as fast as possible and the first of at least two drill rigs earmarked for the Los Reyes drill program has been mobilized. Core drilling is supposed to start this week on both the Zapote North as well as the Zapote South deposits, which are two of the largest deposits on the Los Reyes property. Approximately 21 holes are planned to add additional tonnes and ounces to the existing resource estimate and it looks like there may be some low-hanging fruit down dip and along strike of the known mineralization.
Resource expansion is just one part of the new drill program, which will also consist of a considerable amount of infill drilling. The infill drill program won’t just focus on upgrading inferred resources into the measured and indicated category, but will also provide valuable information on the silver values at Los Reyes as the historical RC holes weren’t assayed for silver. Given the strong silver values encountered in the recent trenching activities (with over 6,000 trench, underground and road cut samples sent off for assaying so far), actually assaying the core for silver may boost the value of the project.
If the silver values could be confirmed, Los Reyes could be shaping up to become a full CIL project rather than a heap leach project we expected it to be at the beginning. If the trench sampling results in the image above could be confirmed in the drill program, it may very well be worth pursuing the higher capex and higher-recovery production scenario using a milling scenario rather than blindly focusing on the heap leach potential.
Exploration at Los Reyes is barely starting and we are very anxious to see the results of the upcoming drill program. The current resource estimate contains 800,000 ounces in the measured, indicated and inferred resource categories (633,000 ounces gold in the measured & indicated resources and 179,000 ounces in the inferred resource category) as well as an additional 23 million ounces of silver using a cutoff grade of 0.22 g/t gold. With this year’s focus on both resource expansion and infill, these numbers should increase without too much effort.
2021 will be an exciting year for Prime.
Disclosure: The author has a long position in Prime Mining. Prime is a sponsor of the website. Please read our disclaimer.
