China-focused miner Silvercorp Metals Inc (NSYEAMERICAN:SVM) (TSX:SVM) reported Thursday encouraging results from exploration at its GC silver-lead-zinc mine in Guangdong Province.
It is the firm's second primary asset and initial output started in 2014. It has a projected mine life of 12 years, based on proven and probable reserves, at an average annual production rate of about 300,000 tonnes.
From October last year to the end of September this, the firm continued extensive exploration programs, with 25,877 metres of diamond drilling and 14,243 m of exploration tunneling between the elevation levels of 300 m and 150 m.
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Notably, drilling extended the major mineralized vein structures along strike and downdip, while tunneling exposed high grade mineralized zones within major production vein structures, said Silvercorp.
More than 40 parallel and splay structures were discovered near the major mineralized zones and the discovery of a west-east striking mineralized vein expanded mineralization around 100 m to the south from existing resources.
Among the highlight assays was a drill hole which hit a 2.52 m interval from 73.35 m to 75.87 m, 2.47 m true width, of a newly discovered vein grading 319 grams per ton (g/t) silver, 3.75% lead and 6.70% zinc at the 232 m elevation.
In exploration results, one drift tunnel exposed mineralization 28 m long and 0.91 m wide, grading 234 g/t silver, 13.56% lead and 6.42% zinc within a vein structure on the 100m level.
Today's results follow last week's exploration results from the flagship SGX mine, which lies in the Ying mining province of Henan province, which started producing in 2006.
There, over 41,000 metres of diamond drilling with seven underground rigs were carried out along with 30,748 metres of exploration tunneling between elevation levels 110 m and 710 m.
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