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Murray Ward
Advance Metals has roared out of the blocks in Mexico, with the first diamond drill hole from a maiden program at its wholly owned Gavilanes project returning a 33.9-metre zone of high-grade silver mineralisation.
The opening hole’s headline intercept clocked 220 grams per tonne (g/t) silver from 117.6m down-hole. The hit also featured a rich 6.2-metre slice grading a mouthwatering 718g/t silver from 133m.
Notably, the deeper sections of the same hole also delivered increasing gold and base metal values. A 3.3-metre interval from 164.6 metres ran at 270g/t silver, 0.2g/t gold, 0.7 per cent copper, 0.7 per cent lead and 1.1 per cent zinc, showcasing significant polymetallic potential.
This polymetallic picnic basket was anchored by an even sweeter internal core of 1.65m at 394g/t silver, 0.4g/t gold, 1.1 per cent copper, 1.1 per cent lead and 1.7 per cent zinc from 166.25m.
‘This is an excellent first result from our maiden drilling program.’
Advance Metals managing director and chief executive officer Dr Adam McKinnon
Laboratory assay results are currently pending for the second diamond hole of the program, which was completed to a depth of 291m to test southern extensions of the known mineralised footprint. Meanwhile, a third extensional diamond hole is actively in progress on the same drill section.
Advance Metals managing director and chief executive officer Dr Adam McKinnon said: “This is an excellent first result from our maiden drilling program at Gavilanes and provides early validation of the strategy we outlined when drilling commenced in May. GV-2c-001 has intersected a broad zone of high grade silver mineralisation, including c.2m at 718g/t Ag, in an area where we are targeting extensions to the known high grade system.”
Advance’s field campaign is targeting major extensions to the existing system at Gavilanes, which currently hosts a substantial historical foreign estimate of 22.4 million silver-equivalent ounces at an average grade of 246g/t silver-equivalent.
Management says today’s first-up drilling success is expected to support a comprehensive JORC resource upgrade targeted for the final quarter of this year.
The impressive initial result follows on from a highly successful drilling campaign at Advance’s nearby Yoquivo project in Chihuahua. The company’s recent exploration push doubled that project’s endowment to a massive 33 million silver-equivalent ounces.
To round out its valuable multi-commodity pipeline, Advance also recently consolidated full ownership of its high-grade Victorian gold assets.
The Vic footprint is headlined by the Happy Valley deposit within the Myrtleford project, where previous drilling threw out a spectacular bonanza-grade hit of 7.5m running at 55g/t gold from 178.1m, including an ultra-high-grade slice of 1.3m at an eyewatering 305.8g/t gold.
Metallurgical testing at Happy Valley has returned premium gravity gold recoveries of up to 96 per cent.
Next steps for the company will see technical crews continue to drill the broader exploration grid at Gavilanes, comprising up to 18 holes across 4500m of drilling. At the same time, management plans to selectively resample historical drill cores to accumulate low-cost geological data and refine the site model.
And to cap off the immediate exploration program, the company will test priority targets outside the current resource to assess the Gavilanes system’s scale potential.
With the drill bit delivering high-grade results on the very first try and more assay results on the way, Advance could be well on its way to cracking open a major multi-commodity system in Mexico.
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