Goldplay Exploration has secured approval from the Mexican national environmental agency Secretaria de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (SEMARNAT) for its drilling campaign at the San Marcial Project in the Mexican state Sinaloa.

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Image: Natural silver nugget, 1 cm long. Photo courtesy of Jurii/Wikipedia.

Located 30km from Goldplay’s 100%-owned El Habal Project in the Rosario Mining District, the San Marcial project is a silver, zinc, lead resource-stage project. The approval from SEMARNAT is for the drilling of up to 69 holes, using diamond core or reverse circulation methods, in a period of two years ending August 2020. It comes after the filing of an environmental impact statement pertaining to the San Marcial Project and upcoming drill plans of Goldplay. The approval enables surface geological exploration including trenching and drilling activities at the prospect. Goldplay, in a statement, said: “SEMARNAT recognizes that the activities proposed by Goldplay will be beneficial to the local community with opportunities of employment for local residents and will contribute to the socio-economic development of the local community.” It further said that the Mexican authorities did not place any extraordinary conditions on the planned drill campaigns. The company has been asked to meet standard requirements such as the rehabilitation of disturbances resulting from the exploration activities, and also minimizing construction of new access tracks and not causing any damage to the local environment. Goldplay expects to take up a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) next year under which it will perform preliminary engineering and economic analysis assuming a combined open pit/underground operations for the San Marcial Project. It said drilling under the recently awarded permit will enable it to test down dip and along strike extensions to the mineralization identified in the historic resource, and also to provide more samples for metallurgical, that will be entered into the PEA. According to Goldplay, the mineralization at the San Marcial Project is typical of the low sulphidation, epithermal systems found near the contact of the Tertiary, Upper and Lower Volcanic units in the Sierra Madre Occidental Geological Province. Earlier this month, the company revealed additional results from sampling of the historical core drill holes, completed in 2010, from the San Marcial Project in Mexico. It said that the results support open pit potential of the initial 500m long deposit.