Property
Fundamentals
NIEVES — Located in the Famed Mexican Silver Belt — the Faja de Plata. The Faja de Plata is the most prolific silver province in the world. Since its discovery in the 16th century, more than 10 billion ounces of silver and 70 million ounces of gold have been produced. The Faja de Plata is home to numerous 1-billion-ounce silver reserve mines and districts.
The Nieves silver property is located 90 km north of Fresnillo, an analogous deposit to Nieves and the largest silver producer in the world. Nieves is 156 km southwest of Peñasquito, the world’s largest silver reserve, the world’s second-largest gold producer, and sister property to Nieves.
Nieves is a silver, gold, lead, and zinc property.
Property Valuation
For all property types, asset value is a joint product of any potentially extractable mineral resources located under the earth’s surface and any invested capital that is used to extract this mineral resource. In order to perform a fundamental valuation of a mining company the amount of mineral reserves must be estimated. Given the importance to the mining industry to distinguish the definitions of Mineral Reserve and Mineral Resource, definitions are given here in full.
History
The first discovery in the area covered by the Nieves Property was the Santa Rita Vein in 1560 by Spanish explorers (Turner, 1999; Cavey, 1999). Soon after, in 1574, the Concordia vein was discovered. The Santa Rita and Concordia-San Gregorio-Dolores veins were the focus of mining by the Spanish and Mexican miners until 1880. Most of the mining activity in the Nieves District occurred between 1880 and 1910, when an English company, the Mexican Rosario Mining Company, and two Californian companies, the Almaden Mining Company and the Concordia M. and M. Company, worked in the area. These companies worked on the Concordia vein primarily while a small independent miner, Gonzáles Piñera, worked concurrently on the San Gregorio vein (Turner, 1999; Cavey, 1999).
Geology
Silver mineralization on the Nieves property is classified as low-sulphidation epidermal and is the primary target. Epidermal silver veins are dominant in the Altiplano Region of Mexico that include world-class examples such as Pachuca, Zacatecas, Fresnillo, and Guanajuato. The closest example is the Fresnillo deposit, the source of the largest producing silver mine in the world, located 90 km to the south of the Nieves property. The Fresnillo deposit include mantos, and chimneys, stockworks, disseminated mineralization, and veins that show vertical mineralogical zonation.
