Three companies released drilling results during the week coming from projects in Mexico: Pan American Silver on La Colorada Skarn in Zacatecas, Prime Mining on Los Reyes in Sinaloa and Goldgroup Mining on Cerro Prieto in Sonora.

Pan American Silver’s impressive grade*meter numbers on silver, lead and zinc come from the ongoing infill and geotechnical drill program at La Colorada Skarn project, adjacent to its La Colorada property, where they are mining an intermediate sulfidation vein system. Prime Mining’s results are from Expansion drilling on the Tahonitas area at Los Reyes, where the company believes the early-stage intersections demonstrate the Tahonitas structure continues to be mineralized for 350 m along strike and may support pit expansion to the southeast near surface, as well as an increased potential for high-grade plunging shoots that might provide “high-margin underground feed”.

The newcomer on this weekly review is Goldgroup Mining, with results from 2023 drilling at its Cerro Prieto mine in Sonora. Cerro Prieto is within 10 K from Agnico Eagle’s Santa Gertrudis project and even closer from Sonoro’s Cerro Caliche project. Cerro Caliche is a low sulfidation system hosted in Tertiary volcanic rocks and Triassic-Jurassic sedimentary rocks intruded by an Eocene granodiorite stock, whereas mineralization at Santa Gertrudis includes disseminated gold in sedimentary rocks that has been described as Carlin-Style and/or low sulfidation epithermal, and clear low sulfidation quartz stockworks and veins. At Cerro Prieto, mineralization developed in a shear zone up to 65 m in width. Unfortunately the description of the local stratigraphy for Cerro Prieto on their last technical report (2023) comes at odds with the published government maps and include some bizarre descriptions for at least one of the units. Mineralization is interpreted by Goldgroup to have come in two stages, an early mesothermal one that would attest for the Pb, Zn and Mo grades and a later low sulfidation epithermal that would introduce the higher gold values and the silver. The old Cerro Prieto mine was one of the type localities for wulfenite (PbMoO4).