Golden Minerals Announces Restart of Silver and Gold Mining Operations at Velardena

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster):  Golden Minerals Company (“Golden Minerals”, “Golden” or the “Company”) (NYSE American: AUMN and TSX: AUMN) announced today that it plans to restart silver-gold mining operations at its Velardeña Properties located in Durango State, Mexico, subject to the receipt of sufficient capital.

Warren M. Rehn, Golden’s President and Chief Executive Officer, stated, “I am very pleased to announce that Golden Minerals’ board of directors has approved plans to restart mining operations at Velardeña. The decision to begin operations again at Velardeña was primarily based on vastly improved sales terms now available to us for the gold-rich pyrite concentrate that is produced from flotation processing of Velardeña mineralized material, which permit us to restart operations without the significant expense of the previously planned bio-oxidation facility. Since the start of 2023, we successfully processed 3,000 tons of material mined in our test mining activities in 2022 and we sold approximately 600 tons of these concentrates under the improved terms with net receipts of approximately $1.5 million or about $500 per ton of mined material. These recent sales augur well for the potential success of our restart plans. We anticipate that we can start mining operations with minimal initial capital of approximately $0.5 million. Our internally developed mine plan projects the production of approximately 0.4 million silver equivalent ouncesduring 2023, with the potential to ramp up to approximately 1.6 million silver equivalent ounces per year thereafter. We have contracted for completion of an independent technical report, which we expect will support our internal projections. We intend to begin preparations to start mining immediately.”

Our internal mine plan calls for underground resue mining, starting with four active stopes initially with processing at Velardeña’s Plant I flotation facility at an initial throughput rate of approximately 80 tonnes per day (“tpd”). As underground development progresses, the number of stopes is anticipated to steadily increase over a period of months until 15 to 18 stopes are ultimately in continuous production. The mill is expected to reach a steady-state processing rate of approximately 325 tpd by the end of the year. All required permits are already in place, and because Plant I has recently been in use and processing previously mined Velardeña sulfide material, after startup as development costs continue to exceed net revenue, the maximum cash outflows of about $2.3 million, inclusive of the initial $0.5 million, are predicted to be paid back within the first nine months of operations.

The Company, through engagement with an independent engineering firm, intends in the third quarter of 2023 to update the March 2022 Technical Report Summary for Velardeña that was previously completed (including plans for the previously contemplated but no longer required bio-oxidation facility) in accordance with SEC SK-1300 guidelines. That report is available here, for reference: Velardeña Technical Report Summary, Mar. 2022. It summarizes the underlying model from which the Company’s current internally-developed forecasts have been developed.

Silver equivalent production estimate calculated based on $1,900 per ounce gold and $22.50 per ounce silver with 64% payable gold recovery and 81% payable silver recovery and does not include lead and zinc, which will also be produced.

Current Company-developed forecasts for mining a portion of the published resource over an approximate seven-year life of mine (“LOM”) estimate processing 700,000 - 800,000 tonnes of material at Plant I, with LOM payable gold production of 60,000 - 70,000 ounces and LOM payable silver production of 5.5 million - 6.5 million ounces. Operating costs are estimated at $225 - $275 per tonne.

 Courtesy: www.businesswire.com