Operations

At Guanaceví, 2024 plant throughput is estimated to range from 1,150 tonnes per day (tpd) to 1,250 tpd and average 1,200 tpd mining mainly from the Porvenir Cuatro extension on the El Curso concessions. The El Curso concessions were leased from a third party with no upfront costs, but with significant royalty payments on production. Compared to 2023, mine grades are expected to be slightly lower and recoveries are anticipated to be similar in 2024. Cash costs per ounce, AISC per ounce and direct costs¹ on a per tonne basis are expected to be similar to 2023.

¹ These are examples of Non-IFRS Financial Measures. Please refer to the Non-IFRS Measures section of the Company’s Management’s Discussion & Analysis for further information and definitions of these terms.

The principal mineralization within the Santa Cruz-Porvenir mines is an epithermal low-sulfidation, quartz carbonate, fracture-filling vein hosted by a fault-structure that trends approximately N45°W and dips 55° southwest. The fault and vein comprise a structural system referred to locally as the Santa Cruz vein structure or Santa Cruz vein fault. The Santa Cruz vein structure has been traced for 5 km along the trend and averages about 3 m in width. Mineralization in the system is not continuous, but occurs in steeply northwest-raking shoots up to 200 m in strike length. A second vein, sub-parallel to the Santa Cruz vein but less continuous, is economically significant in the Porvenir Dos zone and in the northern portion of deep North Porvenir. It is referred to in both areas as the “Footwall vein”, although in Porvenir Dos, the term “Conglomerate vein” has also been employed.

The Guanaceví silver-gold district comprises classic, high-grade silver-gold, epithermal vein deposits, characterized by low sulphidation mineralization and adularia-sericite alteration. The Guanaceví veins are typical of most other epithermal silver-gold vein deposits in Mexico in that they are primarily hosted in the Tertiary Lower Volcanic series of andesite flows, pyroclastics and epiclastics, overlain by the Upper Volcanic series of rhyolite pyroclastics and ignimbrites. Evidence is accumulating in the Guanaceví mining district that the mineralization is closely associated with a pulse of silicic eruptions that either signaled the end of Lower Volcanic Sequence magmatism or the onset of Upper Volcanic Sequence activity. Low sulphidation epithermal veins in Mexico typically have a well-defined, sub-horizontal ore horizon about 300 m to 500 m in vertical extent where the bonanza grade ore shoots were deposited due to boiling of the hydrothermal fluids. Neither the top nor the bottom of the Santa Cruz ore horizon has yet been found.