Project

History

Gold and silver were discovered at Los Reyes by the Spanish in the late 1700s and mining occurred in the area for over 150 years up until the 1950s. The Guadalupe de los Reyes underground mine opened in the late 1800s and to date is the most significant source of gold production in the district. It is estimated to have produced 500-600,000 oz of gold and 40M oz of silver at reported grades of +10 g/t Au and +500 g/t Ag.

From the 1950s through the 1980s there was limited activity in the Los Reyes area other than mostly exploration reconnaissance studies. Modern drilling began at the Los Reyes area in the 1990s and was targeted at defining shallow and lower-grade gold-silver mineralization in areas surrounding the historical Los Reyes underground operations.  Previous owners drilled approximately 50,000 meters of RC and core drilling within the current project boundaries and also performed metallurgical testwork culminating in several studies and resource estimates.

Prime mining has since added significant core drilling, metallurgical testing, geotechnical investigation and other work, releasing its second resource estimate and Technical Report update in May, 2023.

Prime’s Los Reyes property consists of a land package of 37 contiguous concessions, totaling to a property size of 6,273 hectares. An application has been made for an additional 7,500 hectare  concession, the El Rey.

Geology & Mineralization

The Property is in the Guadalupe de los Reyes mining district in the western foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range, Sinaloa State, México. In the vicinity of the Property, the volcanic sequence unconformably overlies a late Cretaceous-aged felsic batholith. This overlying volcanic package is subdivided into Lower and Upper sequences that are separated by an angular unconformity. 

The Lower Sequence spans from late Cretaceous-early Tertiary, is approximately 1 km thick, and is predominantly composed of intermediate (andesite) volcanics, felsic intrusives and related felsic (dacite to rhyolite) volcanics, intercalated sandstone and volcanic conglomerate intervals. 
The upper sequence, which is deposited unconformably on the lower sequence, is composed of ash-flow and ash-fall tuffs that are rhyolitic to dacitic in composition. In the main area of mineralization, the deposits dominantly occur along three northwest and west-northwest oriented silicified structural corridors.

These mineralized structural corridors are named after the hosted mineralized areas which include:

Mineralized areas that are not along the main recognized structural corridors include Fresnillo, Las Primas, Las Palmitas, El Orito, Mina, El Tule and La Verde.

Resource

Mineral Resource - May 2023

Note that the Resource Calculations shown below are released with a cut-off date of December 31st, 2022, and do not include any data released after this date.

GOLD RESOURCE

• 1,013 kozs Measured & Indicated
• 497 kozs Inferred

SILVER RESOURCE

• 35,300 kozs Measured & Indicated
• 18,300 kozs Inferred

Exploration

Prime Mining has completed three years of drilling at Los Reyes with the completion of over 168,000 meters in 606 holes. Results to date show that the deposits are much larger than historically reported with several new discoveries including very high grade gold-silver mineralization discoveries outside of the currently defined resources. 

The project continues to be vastly underexplored with potential for additional discoveries and resource expansion potential based on open extensions of known deposits, multiple untested high priority exploration targets, and only 40% of the known structures systematically explored, leaving over 10 kilometres of untested strike length.

Prime is targeting 40,000 metres in its 2024 drill program and will continue to evaluate drilling plans using its success-based approach. This evaluation will also include prioritization of targets based on probability of resource development and generative area discovery potential.

2024 exploration is focused on:

• Extending the high-grade Z-T Area shoots that remain open at depth, as well as along strike, both north and south.
• Expanding the known high-grade mineralization at Guadalupe East.
• Increasing the Central Area resource through additions at Noche Buena and its connection to San Miguel East.
• Generative target drilling of high-grade intercepts at Las Primas, Mariposa, Fresnillo, Mina and others to further develop the resource potential at Los Reyes.