GUEST COLUMN — Mexico: A mining man’s dream?

Mexico is experiencing a modern-day exploration boom, the direct result of radical changes to its mining laws. Rich in minerals, the country is the world’s largest supplier of silver and exports large quantities of lead, zinc, cadmium, manganese, bismuth and antimony. But it is estimated barely 20% of its mineral wealth has been properly surveyed.

For decades, antiquated, restrictive mining laws served to discourage an international mining industry presence. Its substantial mineral potential simply remained underdeveloped as modern exploration techniques all but bypassed the country.

But this has changed. Under the direction of a government that seeks to modernize the country’s economy and join with the world’s industrialized nations, Mexico has taken sweeping steps to attract foreign investment in mineral exploration.

These changes did not come too soon for Ivan Christopher, a Canadian mining engineer and geologist who has been intimately aware of Mexico’s mineral potential for decades. Since graduating from the University of Saskatchewan with a B.Sc. in geology in 1938, he has worked in many of the world’s major mining exploration regions, both in North America and elsewhere. He staked the well-known Joutel Copper Mines property in Ontario and then sold it to Kerr Addison-Noranda. Christopher was also one of the founding partners of the Great Lakes Nickel discovery.

Apart from geological consulting practice, he is president of National Gold & Nickel Mines. Based in Toronto, he has maintained a second home in the state of Sonora for the past 26 years.

It is in that region that the majority of Canadian, U.S. and European companies now active in Mexico have come to search for commercial deposits of precious and base metals.

Christopher just might be a jump ahead of them, for during the past quarter-century he has accumulated a mass of information concerning the local geology and the deposition of gold and other minerals in Sonora. He has also come to know the local people well, and has identified a number of prospective exploration targets.

Since the change in mining laws, Christopher was quick to activate one of his primary gold prospects, known locally as the San Martin gold property, for which he obtained the rights to acquire control. This has now been vended to a junior Toronto-based, CDN-listed company, Aronos Multinational, which has already carried out substantial exploration, including drilling which has encountered gold over a widespread area.

“The property contains very rich alluvial material (gold) that has been milled by nature for some 100 million years and washed down on to the property from the Sierra Martinez mountains that flank the property,” Christopher describes Aronos. “Such alluvial deposits are common in an area encompassing some 50 square miles in Sonora.”

Mexico’s considerable mineral potential is made abundantly clear by the presence of so many of North America’s largest mining companies, including Phelps Dodge, Placer Dome, Cominco, Hecla Mining, Newmont Mining, Kennecott and Noranda Minerals.

Add to this list many smaller companies that have been active there since 1990, and it brings to almost 100 the number of foreign operators seeking to exploit the country’s underdeveloped mineral wealth.

Aronos, which recently completed a third financing for its next work phase, could become the realization of a mining man’s dream for Christopher. Work will include extensive exploration to expand tonnage leading toward initial gold production. Known surface deposits, says Christopher, are ideally suited to open-pit mining and heap leaching.

— Harold Clifford is a freelance

investment analyst and financial writer based in Toronto.