Advance Metals Targets Resource Upgrades Across its Mexican Silver-Gold Portfolio
Advance Metals (ASX: AVM) is targeting upgrades to the mineral resource estimates across its high-grade Guadalupe y Calvo, Yoquivo and Gavilanes silver-gold projects in the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Durango.
The projects sit in the prolific Sierra Madre Volcanic Belt nearby to a number of existing world-class deposits and have a combined foreign resource estimate of more than 100 million ounces silver equivalent (AgEq) and significant district-scale upside.
Advance is drawing up exploration programs using datasets from approximately 112,000 metres of historical diamond drilling to target the sequential upgrade and conversion of known resources at each project and identify new high-grade mineralisation.
High-Grade Addition
Advance’s July acquisition of Guadalupe y Calvo, which sits at the mid-point between Yoquivo and Gavilanes, added a high-grade gold-silver asset to its precious metals portfolio.
The project hosts nearly 86,000m of resource definition and exploration drilling across the Rosario and Nankin prospects, with core samples currently stored in three separate facilities near the site for further logging and test work.
A 2021 foreign estimate from 217 surface holes using a cut-off grade of 0.27g/t gold equivalent (AuEq) totalled 9.5 million tonnes grading 2.7 grams per tonne AuEq for 816,000 ounces AuEq (60.6Moz AgEq), including a high-grade indicated and inferred underground component of 3.05Mt at 5g/t AuEq for 494,000oz AuEq, using a cut-off grade of 1.33g/t AuEq.
Advance will split the planned resource upgrade at Guadalupe y Calvo between underground and open-cut resources, to update the grade and price parameters and investigate the potential to add in mineralisation from the north-western portion of the deposit.
Drilling Data
The Yoquivo project came with a total of 16,565m of diamond drilling data, mainly from between 2020 and 2022, when Advance acquired it last year.
The company completed an additional eight diamond holes for 3,111m in the Pertenencia area during 2025, and is holding all core samples at its storage and processing facility in Durango.
Advance has begun a program of cutting and sampling on the highest-potential core, and expects to commence work towards an updated resource estimate once it has received the assays.
Former owner Golden Minerals completed Yoquivo’s current foreign estimate of 17.2Moz at 570g/t AgEq (inferred) at a cut-off grade of 200g/t in 2023.
Gavilanes Upgrade
Gavilanes includes a total of 9,624m of diamond drilling from 2012 and 2013, with Advance also holding these core samples at the Durango facility.
The project has a high-grade existing foreign estimate of 22.4Moz AgEq at 246g/t (inferred) at a 100g/t cut-off.
Advance’s focus for the upgrade will include investigating existing geology models and mineralisation interpretations, as well as reviewing metal equivalency assumptions and pricing parameters.