More silver for Bear Creek in Peru

More results from Peru have Bear Creek Mining (BCM-T) thinking about another silver mine in the South American country.

While it’s still early days for its Santa Ana project a first resource estimate isn’t due out until early next year drill results from the most recent 15 holes look promising.

Highlights include:

• Drill hole SA-48 — 128 metres at 70.4 grams silver per tonne, including 32 metres at 171.9 grams silver and 1.2% zinc.
• Drill hole SA-50 98 metres grading 75.2 grams silver per tonne, including 14 metres grading 100.7 grams silver and 10 metres grading 141 grams silver at 0.9% zinc.
• Drill hole SA-55 162 metres grading 56.9 grams silver per tonne including 20 metres at 105.5 grams silver and 30 metres at 102.7 grams silver.

Results come from 3,483 metres of drilling and the company has now drilled 113 holes for a total of 20,060 metres.

The deposit is open in all directions and, the company says, mineralized holes have been drilled some 500 metres beyond the limits of the data being included in the resource block model.

Andrew Swarthout, president and chief executive of Bear Creek, said in a statement that preliminary tests point to a low-cost heap leach extraction.

“Santa Ana presents a very developable, straight-forward silver deposit with excellent upside potential,” Swarthout said.

Bear Creek says high-grade structures are being hit within large halos of lower grade heap-leach material, and it says it has indications that mineralization may continue westward for another 200 meters beneath shallow, untested cover.

The Corani project — also in Peru remains the company’s flagship project with 278 million oz. of silver, 3.12 billion lbs. of lead and 1.59 billion lbs. of zinc, with another 40 million oz. of silver in the inferred category.

In Toronto on Dec. 18 a day when the overall market was down — Bear Creek shares were off 12 to $6.88 on roughly 58,000 shares.