Dan Dickson
CEO, Endeavour Silver
We want to maintain a silver dominant portfolio. Approximately 60% of our production is silver and 40% gold, and we will continue with that. Our company was built through the drill bit and that entrepreneurial spirit continues today across our diverse portfolio of assets. We always look for M&A opportunities, particularly in Mexico, which is the world’s best address for silver mineralization. We have also picked up properties in Chile and most recently Nevada. For our Terronera project, the next step is putting financing in place for the USD175-million project. The project will be funded through a combination of cash on hand, cash flow, and debt. Currently, we are working with commercial banks to secure between USD80 million and USD100 million of project financing in debt. Following receipt of committed financing, our board will be in position to make a formal construction decision. In the lead up to financing, we are going ahead with early works, working on procurement and detailed engineering as well as road upgrades and equipment sourcing. In 2022, our primary goals are safe production and commencing construction at Terronera. We will continue to advance in our exploration properties, including Parral in Chihuahua.
Luiz Camargo
Country Head, Compañía Minera Cuzcatlán
We are focused on low-cost operations, which allows us to always have a robust EBITDA margin. We cannot control commodity prices, so our approach is to maximize production processes. In this way, we ensure that production costs are low. We are one of the lowest-cost operators not only in Mexico, but also internationally. The cost for us is around USD65-70 per ton. We are present in Oaxaca, a state that we know well and understand the community. We support shared development projects, which consist of establishing a platform within the community to understand their concerns. This generates empathy with the community, and the result of this process is that they begin to approach us. This is one of Minera Cuzcatlán’s strengths. We have a defined an exploration program for Oaxaca around the mine, and there may one day be significant exploration potential. We are investing approximately USD10 million in 2021 in this area. However, we are also looking at other areas of the country such as Sinaloa and Chihuahua. In addition, we are investing another USD23 million in infrastructure. For the whole year, the total investment will be more than USD33 million.
Michael Konnert
President & CEO, Michael Konnert
There are many opportunities in the state of Sinaloa here because it has been historically overlooked for exploration. It is a great place with a large amount of mineral endowment waiting to be discovered. One example is the Panuco-Copala area consolidated by Vizsla, an area that was discovered 450 years ago, so it is not new. The Panuco project is extremely high grade, and that comes back to the opportunities there. All the great silver districts, such as Zacatecas and Guanajuato, are fairly mature because they have been in large-scale production by large companies for many years. In contrast, this area has never been explored with modern technologies. The company is well funded; we have CAD55 million to fund exploration and development for the next year and a half. We have one of the world’s most aggressive large-scale exploration programs from either major or junior companies around the world, we have 10 drilling rigs in Panuco, with 100,000m being drilled per year. We will explore there for many years to come. I expect to find large amounts of silver and gold. We will be using new technology, airborne electromagnetics, over the property, which is an exciting way to find the potential for more veins there.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
You may also be interested in...
