News

April 03, 2008

Great Panther Leaps Forward: This Year Promises Increased Production And More Silver Ounces In The Ground

By Alastair Ford

It’s a funny old business mining silver. Robert Archer, chief executive of Great Panther Resources, is somewhat bemused that as a producer sitting on top of 22.3 million indicated ounces on just one of several properties in the portfolio, his company is valued at less than others with no production to their names, who boast no more than inferred ounces. But then Mexico is a funny old place to mine. As Mr Archer says, it’s one of the most prospected countries in the world. So much of the ground has been walked, and so much of the surface has been scratched by historic and artisanal work, but as far as detailed exploration goes, activity has been a lot more limited. “The Spaniards didn’t have any diamond drills”, Mr Archer explains, “they would sink a shaft until they hit a vein, and then they’d follow it. In the twentieth century the co-operatives continued to do that. They never needed to do exploration”.

Still there are some well-worked areas. Great Panther’s Rayas property, part of its larger holding across the Guanajuato mine complex in central Mexico, boasts what’s probably the largest diameter shaft in the world. No-one’s quite sure exactly how to verify this – a quick reference to the Guiness Book of Records proves unenlightening – but at first pass it looks more like a medieval crusader castle than a mineshaft. The ounces in the ground underneath might be fairly substantial too....