In 2024, First Majestic Silver Corp. announced the discovery of the Navidad vein system, a new significant, vein-hosted gold and silver mineralized system adjacent to its currently producing Ermitaño mine. The drilling completed during the second half of 2024 significantly expanded the gold and silver mineralization discovered at the Navidad target.
During 2025, additional drilling from surface is planned to continue testing the potential expansion of Navidad, which remains open in multiple directions. Expansionary and infill resource definition drilling will also take place from multiple new underground drilling stations constructed from the Ermitaño mine. Five drill rigs are currently active at Navidad.
In late March 2025, First Majestic announced its 2024 Mineral Reserve and Mineral Resource Estimates for the Ermitaño deposit. As part of the update, First Majestic announced an initial Inferred Mineral Resource at Navidad, consisting of 2.3Mt grading 81 grams per tonne silver (?g/t Ag?) and 3.42 g/t Au, and containing 5.9Moz Ag and 249koz Au. To date, only a portion of the newly delineated vein system has been classified within the Inferred Mineral Resource Estimate, with significant upside potential to be realized by First Majestic through additional drilling.
On May 28th, 2025, First Majestic announced drill results targeting the Winter vein more than 100 meters east of prior drilling and intersected some of the highest-grade mineralization ever encountered on the Santa Elena Property: 6.8 meters grading 14.8 g/t Au and 642 g/t Ag. Five additional significant intersections were cut further downhole including that of the Navidad vein. Resource conversion drilling confirms the continuity of precious metal mineralization and, in general, returned significantly higher gold and silver grades than estimated from prior drilling.
Independent third-party metallurgical testing of Navidad and Winter mineralization under current mineral processing parameters for the Santa Elena processing plant was completed during the fall of 2024. The testing revealed exceptional gold and silver recovery rates with gold recoveries consistently exceeding 90% and silver recoveries exceeding 85%. The results firmly establish that Navidad?s mineralization is compatible with the existing processing infrastructure at First Majestic?s Santa Elena operation.
OR Royalties? 2.0% NSR royalty on Ermitaño includes Navidad, the Cumobabi property, as well as the Luna Zone.
