Argenta Silver Reports 95% Recoveries at El Quevar

0:17All right, moving right along here, we're going to continue with silver exploration in Latin America. And actually, we're going to cover Argenta Silver in this update with my good friend, Joaquin, CEO of the company. They do trade on the venture with AGAG and on the OTCQX with AGAGF. You did publish new metallurgical test results here from Alcobar yesterday here, Joaquin. So this is obviously always important because you've got to know what you can recover in mining. It's not just all about high-grade and drilling results. So walk us through what you found out. Well, we are very, very happy to announce our preliminary metallurgical test work.

0:54And these results are just preliminary. Trevor and I would like to tell you what's the story behind this so we decided to make the metallurgical test work I asked the metallurgist to start working on this and they run the first pass of primary flotation which is called rougher and I suddenly get a call from him because it was supposed that when they finish the the first pass they will let us know the results and we will publish them but he calls me and he's like man we got 99 % recoveries and ruffers and 95 % average on the 15 samples that you sent us so we sent 15 samples across the deposit and he's telling me this and I'm like well that's a very high result 99 % and he's like yeah but if you put this out you know it's it's too high we need to clean two of those samples so we show what is the result on the cleaners and the cleaners is just cleaning those rougher samples and we clean two of those and that's the results that we put out 96 % recoveries with a concentrate of 14 ,857 grams per ton of silver on the concentrate the interesting part of this Trevor is that this is only the first pass with no optimization at all so when he's telling me this I'm asking him how better this can get if we already got 99 % with no optimization at all.

2:24Well, that's what we are going to see afterwards. We are still working on this. This is ongoing and the metallurgical test work should be done on the incoming 30 to 60 days and the objective of this is to obtain final products. We want to obtain a final concentrate from these 15 samples which is a representation of all the deposit and with that we will know exactly what is the properties what are the properties of this concentrate so far we understand that it's going to be very low in lead zinc copper and other elements but the final properties will be completed on the final product that it's going to be in the next 60 to well 30 to 60 days okay can you tell us where those samples came from what part of the project?

3:13Yeah, of course. So we are studying the main deposit here, the main deposit metallurgical test work. And it's from the Jaxche deposit, right? So the 15 samples are drill holes that are all along the deposit. The deposit is like 1.5 kilometer long, along that 1.5 kilometers that we have picked up different drill holes. These drill holes have been picked up with 3D modeling with a lot of different characteristics drills that we understand that will have different mineralogy and different characteristics so we are testing actually the variability across the deposit right and that's why this study was so important and having this homogenic right results on the on the rougher on the primary flotation it's so important because we are not starting to see very low recoveries against very high recoveries.

4:12We are having an average of 95 % recovery on ruffers. And this is very constant all across the deposit, which is telling us that silver can be liberated very easily from the mineral and that silver flottates perfectly. Yeah, so it's a huge de-risking part for the entire Elkobar project here. But with those high recoveries, how much capital allocation do you continue to put towards optimization? How much is the ROI worth if you can get another 1 %? Well, the thing is that this is a study that has been already paid. There is no more to pay or no more to do. And that's the great thing, that it's not that we need to do great things here.

5:02Just having this as it is, it's amazing. So thinking about optimization and blending, it's going to give us a much more refined product for the future, which makes this a niche product for the market. Today, you don't have pure concentrates of silver around the world. You get concentrates that have a lot of lead, a lot of zinc, a lot of copper. And actually, those are the ones that you should be taking care of when you think of a smelter. because on the smelter you cannot put a lot of lead or a lot of zinc on a silver smelt and you need to be very careful with those concentrations so this is going to be a niche product i think that plenty of companies along the world will be looking for things like this so they can blend their own things with this thing that is going to be so pure out there right how important is that simplicity in the process when you begin thinking out like potential capital intensity of this project.

6:00Well, you just asked me about that and this is it. When you see, and this comes back to the kinetics of the fluid, when you flotate silver and you see that only on the first pass you get recoveries of above 90%, it means that you need to do very little to get those huge recoveries, right? That means that your costs are going to be low. And remember, this is a deposit that has 482 grams per ton of silver as the grade on the resource. So it's such a high grade that we are starting to think that maybe in the future this could potentially be a DSO as well. So we could direct ship the ore and still valuable at that grade.

6:47And if we want to concentrate, this would be the concentrates that we will be producing, right? Right. You and I have talked about it, but a lot of the drilling exploration, you have kind of unsurfaced and introduced gold and copper into the matrix here for the project. So obviously there's more, you know, that's another round of test results for recoveries that will potentially need to happen. Are you beginning to think about what that looks like or is that kind of maybe farther down the road? So let's make very clear that the silver deposit is only silver. It has no copper, no lead, no gold.

7:22the copper and the gold that we found it's accessory it's it's it's adjacent to the main deposit right and this adjacency it's perfect because it's showing us that it's gold and copper with no silver so that could be another thing that we need to keep developing we need to keep drilling we need to keep understanding what is happening there so far we know that it's there but we have no current measures or we have no clue very well of the shape and the size of the copper and gold deposit we know that it's there we need to keep drilling to identify and determine better what are the boundaries of that mineralization of copper and gold what we know very well now it's what's the silver looking like what's the silver deposit size what's the silver deposit situation and how big this thing is and where it's open to.

8:15And that's what we are doing now. We are drilling with two drill rigs, one on each extreme of the deposit, and we are expanding the mineralization on both ends. So far, we have expanded 25 % the footprint of the deposit. And that could give you an idea of how many ounces more we could be adding to this, right? So we drilling in both ends expanding the deposit we had an issue receiving back results from the laboratory the laboratory was taking more time than expected we were having lags of up to 10 weeks in some cases so now we are starting to get back all those samples or all those results into into our hands hopefully by the incoming weeks we will be disclosing drilling results that have been waiting for long there and it's it was out of our control we didn't control the timing on the lab, right?

9:06And it's been painful, a painful waiting for us. But now we have those results back and we will be posting those results very soon as well. So the exploration work continues on earlier this summer. And I believe you and I chatted about the results, but you did hit 446 grams per ton. Silver over 28 meters. That was a 120-meter step out at that main silver deposit, Jachi. And I've always mispronounced that thing so bad. I really apologize. But I guess my question really is, Joaquin, how convinced are you that the existing resource in that deposit substantially understates the size of the system?

9:49Well, when you really step out and you hit, and you come back and you drill in between, and you hit again, and you are starting to see this continuity all across the area that you are stepping out, I mean, it's fairly consistent. So we need to identify where that ends. The only way to do that is to keep drilling. The thing is that so far we have been drilling and we keep finding mineralization. So it hasn't been yet the case that we have discovered where the deposit ends. And this is happening for both of the open ends of the deposit. We have been drilling both open ends and both open ends still open every time that we drill them.

10:34And it's getting more and more interesting because it's not just the size of the deposit and it's the grade. It's everything, you know, when you start to put all this in combination. plus what is outside of the drilling. You have to think that this is a project that has a railway coming towards the project. It has a power line. It has a gas pipeline. It has a road. It has a camp. It has over 80 kilometers of internal roads. It has all this infrastructure plus a deposit that could be open pitable in a portion, right, with this high-grade and these concentrated recoveries. then you know when you start putting all these together i think that it's a combo that it's very powerful and i think that uh we need to to keep showing the market what we have in hands i think that the market is actually currently not realizing how all these things come together in terms of future operativity of the project right the capex i think that it's going to be very low in the future because we have most of the infrastructure built up there and uh and the mineral is close to surface so this is fantastic so with the obviously exploration success we've shown that i think it's safe to say or i would i would interpret there's more exploration success to come um but when does aquavar transition from being a primary and exploration story to more of a development story well that it's going to be happening by march 2027 we're going to specific date yeah and i will tell you why.

12:07Look, it's not a specific date. I've been promising the market dates since the day that I took position here as a CEO. And we promised the market things, and we have been fulfilling those dates timely every time. We promised the market that we were going to have these results by September, and we did. Now we have put everything aligned for a mineral resource update for March 2027. I have all my team aligned into that. I have the drillers, I have the labs, I have the firm that is going to do the mineral resource update aligned with us. Everybody's working towards March 2027. In March 2027, we will update our resource.

12:47We are targeting to add all those ounces that we are discovering now on the deposit. All that expansion is going to be added into the new resource. And I I think that that's going to be a catalyst for us because it's going to show that it's still growing and that there is much more silver than what we initially thought. And then we can start probably thinking on some economics because this project, you know, as I told you, it has everything to start to be produced. Having the mineralization, 50 % of the deposit could be open pitable as it is today. as it is today. So, you know, we are expanding the shallow portions as well.

13:27So that's what I mean. We will see in March 2027 with this update of the mineral resource, how things go. We will have the metallurgical test work. We have an environmental baseline done. We have all the infrastructure in place. So when you start putting all together, again, it makes a story. It makes a case. I think that we are moving forward towards something bigger here than just exploring. Okay, so what do we get over the next six or seven months leading into that updated resource in March 2027? More drill results from the main deposit, some other exploration kind of blue sky potential? Yeah, we will see all across those six months a lot of drilling coming out.

14:08We need to wait for the final metallurgical results. These are just the preliminary results which are stunning. We need to find out what is the final concentrate products that we can obtain from Elkevar. That is going to happen in the next 30 to 60 days. By March, we will see this mineral resource update. So those would be the news in coming. All right. You and I will have a lot to talk about in the next few months. Looking forward to it. All right, everybody. That is Joaquin Maria, CEO of Argenta Silver. Again, they trade on the venture exchange with AGAG. Thanks so much, Joaquin. Good to see you.

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