Avino drills new zones at old Mexican mine

Vancouver — Avino was once described as a “mountain of silver” by the Spaniards who mined it for a few hundred years starting in the 1500s. Now held by Avino Silver & Gold Mines (ASM-V, ASGMF-O), the company is finding there is still silver in the hills, and it’s accompanied by gold, copper, lead, and zinc.

Diamond drilling in the San Gonzalo zone on the property, 2 km northeast of the company’s past-producing Avino open-pit mine, is intersecting narrow, high-grade, polymetallic veins. Hole 14, near the southern end of the zone, hit 1 metre of 3,623 grams silver per tonne, 2.93% lead, and 4.83% zinc.

Holes 9 and 10 were collared at the mid-point of the 800-metre strike length. Hole 9 returned 3.2 metres grading 0.88 gram gold, 144 grams silver, 2.27% lead, and 0.65% zinc, while hole 10 intersected 3.75 metres of 2.74 grams gold and 452 grams silver.

Hole 15, near the northern end of the zone, cut a 40-cm section of 0.74 gram gold, greater than 200 grams silver, 0.27% lead, and 0.3% zinc in what Avino geologists believe is a narrowed section of the main San Gonzalo oreshoot.

The Avino project sits in Durango state, Mexico’s leading gold-producing region and also a significant district for silver.

Avino plans to continue drilling the San Gonzalo vein system in order to establish an indicated resource for the zone, which was explored for the first time in 2006. Grades at San Gonzalo are generally higher than those in the Avino vein, which was the focus of most of the historic mining.

The company operated a mine and 1,000-tonne-per-day mill at the Avino site for 27 years, but was forced to close in 2001 because of depressed silver prices and the closure of a key smelter. In mid-2006, with metal prices back up, it set out to revive the old site. It is currently exploring the surrounding areas and drilling at depth below the old open pit to expand resources, refurbishing and upgrading the mine and mill for reopening, and investigating the resource potential in the large tailings pile.

Since then, Avino has drilled roughly 3,350 metres on targets identified in 1993 by Luismin, now a subsidiary of Goldcorp (G-T, GG-N), as well as through an 80-km line deep penetrating induced-polarization survey conducted in 2006.

Last summer, a drill program confirmed that the three principle vein systems — San Luis, El Trompo, and Chirumbo — continue downdip below the existing mine workings. The company also produced a resource estimate for the tailings pile at Avino, which holds 2 million tonnes grading 95.5 grams silver and 0.53 gram gold.