• Your Questions, Our Answers

Q:How will developing the Milache deposit to production help the performance at Guanacevi?

Longitudinal Section of Mines Along 8 Kilometres of the Santa Cruz Vein

Guanacevi was our first mine in Mexico, purchased in 2004. The longitudinal section above outlines the deposits we have discovered to date. Santa Cruz and Porvenir Norte were the first discoveries that we developed to production in 2004-2007. For many years, these were shallow, thick, high grade, low cost mines but 14 years later, they have become deep, narrow, lower grade, high cost mines producing only 8-900 tonnes per day (tpd) into a 1,200 tpd plant.

To revitalize the operation, we are now developing two new discoveries, Milache and Santa Cruz Sur (SCS), which are shallower, thicker, higher-grade resources. In late October, management toured Guanacevi and received an update on operations and the development of the Milache deposit, which should commence production in November and increase tonnage by an additional 400 tpd by Q1, 2019 to boost production and reduce costs at Guanacevi.

The Milache discovery is located along the same Santa Cruz ore bearing vein structure as the Porvenir Norte and Santa Cruz orebodies. The vein has been traced on our properties for about 8 kilometres (km) and Milache is accessed by truck through the Porvenir Cuatro (P4) ramp, located 3.5 km northwest of the producing Santa Cruz and Porvenir Norte mines. An 800 metre (m) decline connects the bottom of P4 to Milache, which is about a 10 minute drive. Development started last year, the ramp arrived at the top of the deposit in August and since that time, work has focused on developing the ventilation and pumping systems. We now have three mine levels under development and plan to start trucking development mineral to the plant this month. Over the next three years, 20 mine levels are planned for production at average grades significantly higher than current grades. Looking forward to 2019, we are developing another new deposit at Santa Cruz Sur (SCS) located at the SE end of the Santa Cruz vein system. Additionally, our operations team will continue to search for improvements in efficiencies to lower costs and apply learnings from the recent optimization program that took place in 2018.

View footage from the recent Management trip by clicking here

Background on Guanacevi:

Endeavour Silver has been producing at Guanacevi near the town of Guanacevi in Durango state since 2004. The mine is situated in a prolific mining area with an extensive but small scale mining history encompassing well-known epithermal silver-gold vein deposits, characterized by low sulphidation, high grade, bonanza ores. Ongoing exploration continues to demonstrate the potential for the discovery of additional resources within the district surrounding the mine to increase production. The Guanaceví mine consists of a 1200 tpd leach plant that produces dore bars and two operating mines, North Porvenir and Santa Cruz, located only 4 km from the plant. The North Porvenir and the Santa Cruz mines share the same access ramp, just as the now exhausted Porvenir 4 mine and Milache deposit share the same access ramp. The Santa Cruz vein itself has been traced for 8 km on our properties along trend, and averages approximately 1-5 m in width.

Back to the media page m