The mineral deposits in the Guanajuato area are classic fissure-hosted low-sulphidation epithermal gold-silver-bearing quartz veins and stockwork.

Mineralization
Guanajuato
The “Veta Madre” quartz-adularia vein / breccia system is closely associated with the Veta Madre fault and an associated diorite dyke (thickness varying from discontinuous lenses at Guanajuatito to a 50-100m thick body in the Cata, Los Pozos, and Santa Margarita areas), oriented 325-degrees with a 45-degree southwest dip.

Ore mineralization comprises an early silver-rich phase associated with adularia, as well as a later low-silver variant, which is typified by calcite and quartz. The post-ore mineralization is also precious metal poor, with accessory calcite, dolomite, and fluorite. Zone thickness ranges from centimeter-scale to tens of meters.

The vertical extent of the deposits at Guanajuato spans over 600 meters. Mineralization occurring above the 2,100-meter elevation was termed “upper ore”, between 2,100 meter and 1,700 meter “lower ore”, and below the 1,700-meter elevation “deep ore” (Randall, 1994).

The best mineralization is often found related to bends in the Veta Madre orientation (Barclay, 2007 and Rhys, 2013) such as at San Vicente in the Rayas area, and at Cata and Santa Margarita.

At the Guanajuatito area the main mineralization occurs just into the footwall Esperanza Formation deformed siltstone and shale.

At the ........

Valenciana Mine Complex (VMC, formerly known as the Guanajuato Mine Complex or GMC) comprises the Guanajuato and San Ignacio operations. Typically, all zones at the VMC are extracted by the Cut & Fill mining method.

Continuing operations at VMC will be achieved through the backfilling of tailings underground using a hydraulic fill system that will make use of select voids and open stopes that have been created at VMC over the past 450 years of underground mining.

The Guanajuato Silver will benefit from increased operational efficiency through the use of the newly refurbished StopeMate as the Guanajuato Silver can now employ longhole stoping as a mining method where appropriate.

Longhole stoping is used to extract mineralized material from an underground mine by drilling a pattern of closely spaced, parallel holes into the mineralized material and then blasting the mineralized material between the holes. The StopeMate drill is designed to drill these closely spaced, parallel holes quickly and efficiently from a single position. This ensures that the holes are drilled straight and parallel, which is important for extracting mineralized material more effectively, with less dilution and lower costs. The long hole drill is commonly used for underground bulk mining which will be applied in stopes over 1.5 meters in width, this will allow the Guanajuato Silver to increase production in approximately 25% of the production areas of the mine.

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