Significant potential for development of San Celso and Los Campos Silver Projects Identified from High Grade Silver Veins
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Alien Metals Limited (“Alien” or “Alien Metals”), the AIM-quoted mineral exploration and development company (formerly, Arian Silver Corporation), provides a positive update on the Company’s wholly owned San Celso and Los Campos Silver projects located within the immediate vicinity of the Fresnillo, Minera Frisco (Carlos Slim) and Endeavour Silver Majors’ silver mines, in the world class Silver Belt in Central Mexico (see Figure 1, below).
Alien Metals’ technical team have collated available historical data and exploration work in tandem with Alien’s most recent field work results to summarise the status of the projects and potential next stage work programmes. The July exploration work undertaken by Alien builds favourably on historical work at San Celso and Los Campos, and it is apparent that the projects are underexplored and hold considerable exploration and development potential.
Project Highlights include:
San Celso Project
- Project hosts two historic underground silver mines, the San Celso and the Las Cristinitas mine
- San Celso developed from colonial times to circa 1930s to at least 130m depth from surface on at least three accessible levels with numerous stopes indicating the presence of high-grade silver shoots
- San Celso vein strikes for c.300m, Las Cristinitas vein for c.200m and the Nueva Andromeda Vein potential c.250-300m within the project area
- Reported between 0.5 – 6.0m vein thickness of the main mineralised veins with associated wall rock mineralisation
- Indications are that mineralisation continues at depth below historic mining and on strike in both directions
- Previous and recent sampling by Alien confirms very high silver grades up to 1,389 g/t Ag, with high grade average (>200 g/t Ag) averaging 441 g/t Ag from 96 samples
Los Campos Project
- Contains at least seven shafts developed along the length of the Los Campos vein, developed to a depth of at least 50m in the 1900s with combined mineralised veins striking over 3 km of Los Campos and San Rafael veins
- The San Rafael vein not yet tested – significant potential for it to be as mineralised as the Los Campos vein
Historic and recent sampling confirm very high silver grades up to 547 g/t Ag
Bill Brodie Good, Technical Director commented:
“The recent review of historical exploration carried out on these two projects located in a world class silver belt in Mexico combined with the recent field work reveals the projects have great potential to host economic silver bodies both underexplored to date. We will continue our studies on these projects as well as planning for the next stage of work while also looking for potential partners to support taking these projects to the next level they deserve.”
The locations of Alien Metals’ projects (highlighted in green) within the world class Mexico Silver Belt
Are set out in figure 1: www.alienmetals.uk/assets/img/191001_figure1.jpg:
San Celso
The San Celso property consists of three contiguous mining concessions located 50 km southeast of Zacatecas. The project hosts two historic underground silver mines, the San Celso and the Las Cristinitas mine. Records refer to initial mining taking place in early colonial times on the San Celso mine itself, and that it was developed to at least 130m depth from surface on at least three levels. Each of the accessible levels has numerous stopes indicating the presence of high-grade silver shoots within the San Celso vein itself. There are no production records or mine plans for this mine.
The Las Cristinitas vein is located in the footwall of the San Celso vein, approximately 115m to the east-northeast. Although little is known about the Las Cristinitas vein, early sampling indicates that it is similar in grade to the San Celso vein. The width of the Las Cristinitas structure appears to be greater than that of the San Celso vein since mineralisation occurs in both the footwall and hanging wall as well as the vein itself. Historic underground geological mapping also identified further mineralisation comprising a 6m wide structure between the Las Cristinitas Vein and the San Celso Vein. This vein structure is approximately 10-20m in the footwall of the San Celso vein. It is thought that this may be the strike extension of the Nueva Andromeda vein which has been historically mined just outside the current Alien tenement boundary.
At San Celso, the geologic setting, high silver content and characteristic vein mineralogy and textures con?rm the af?nity of this system with other deposits of this style in Zacatecas and elsewhere in Mexico: high silver content, vein mineralogy and textures. Examples include Fresnillo, San Martín de Bolaños, Guanajuato and Pachuca-Real de Monte.
A report by independent consultants ACA Howe in March 2006 titled ‘TECHNICAL REPORT ON THE CALICANTO AND SAN CELSO PROJECTS, ZACATECAS, MEXICO’ was incorporated into the Arian Silver Corporation (“Arian Silver”) AIM Admission document. A detailed review of the project was part of this report and significant information is apparent from this work that was as relevant when written in 2006 as it is today.
Gold and silver grades in low-sul?dation epithermal systems as present at San Celso can be very high, occasionally reaching gold grades on the order of tens of grams of gold per tonne and kilograms of silver per tonne, as is seen in the historic sampling (see below) and the most recent round of sampling completed in July 2019 by Alien Metals.
At the time of the ACA Howe study (2006) Arian Silver was engaged in a detailed sampling programme at the San Celso and Las Cristinitas mines, having access to the underground mine workings. Both mines were being mapped as part of the sampling programme. In 2006 the Company had collected a total of 438 samples from the San Celso and Las Cristinitas workings and dumps, and the three levels were accessible in the San Celso mine by approximately 130m of ladder. Of these 265 chip-channel samples were from the Las Cristinitas workings. Assay results included a 4.65m interval at >1000 g/t Ag including 1.05m at 2,683 g/t Ag, 78.2 oz/t Ag.
Summary results from underground sampling from the Las Cristinitas Mine are shown in Table 1 from the 2006 sampling campaign.
Full RNS Update HERE
