(Kitco News) Argenta Silver is aiming to grow the resource at its El Quevar silver project in Argentina to 70 million to 75 million ounces by March 2027, up from about 50 million ounces today. Early metallurgical tests have returned recoveries well above what the industry typically sees.
President and CEO Joaquin Marias spoke with Kitco Mining on Sept. 24 at the 2026 Precious Metals Summit in Beaver Creek. Three days earlier, Argenta had released the first results from variability testwork on the Yaxtché deposit in Salta province. In rougher flotation, 13 of 15 samples averaged about 95% silver recovery, with some reaching 99%. Of the two samples taken on to cleaner flotation, one achieved 96% recovery to a concentrate grading 14,857 grams per tonne silver.
“I have to say that we were completely shocked when we saw the 99% recovery,” Marias said. He put typical industry recoveries somewhere between the 60s or 70s to about 85%.
He was careful to frame the results as an early read, noting, “This portion, this stage, it’s like very raw. There is no optimization work. There is no blending that has been done. Nothing at all to make this better.” The company expects final results, including full concentrate characteristics, within about 45 to 60 days of the Sept. 21 release.
Marias said the numbers come from assays, not judgment. “These are not subjective results; they are objective results that are coming out of an instrument that measures how much silver is in there.” With samples drawn from across roughly 1.5 kilometers of mineralization, he said the work shows “that recoveries are independent of the variability in mineralogy.”
He attributed the results to the deposit’s high-grade silver sulfides, which he said separate from the rock quickly when ground and float well, even at a standard grind.
He sees the results feeding into lower future costs, helped by infrastructure already in place. “We need to understand that El Quevar is not just another project in the middle of nowhere,” Marias said. According to the company, a railroad, gas pipeline and service road run within three kilometers of its 100-person camp, and a high-voltage power line lies about 20 kilometers from the exploration area.
Two rigs are drilling the open ends of Yaxtché, though assays were slow to return. “We had a terrible lag in terms of sample results from the laboratory,” Marias said.
Results have since started to flow. On Oct. 5, Argenta reported that a 100-meter northwest step-out returned 1,599 g/t silver over 4.0 meters, including 2,780 g/t over 2.0 meters. The same release reported 0.45 g/t gold and 0.19% copper over 46.0 meters toward the Carmen gold-copper target.
Most of the current resource is already indicated: 45.3 million ounces grading 482 g/t, with 4.1 million ounces inferred. The update is meant to add new ounces around that core. “What I want to say is that we have too many indicated, and we are aiming to add a lot of inferred,” Marias said. “Our base target is around 70 to 75 million ounces for the next update in total for the resource.” The update will also draw on historical core. In September, Argenta finished re-sampling about 4,372.6 meters from 171 old holes that had never been assayed, with early results including 1,465 g/t silver over 1.0 meter.
Drilling has accelerated since Argenta acquired the project in October 2024. “For the last 40 years in this project, there has been only 100,000 meters drilled in the project,” Marias said. “We drilled 27,000 meters just in 18 months.” At depth, he said, the company is “starting to see grades that are even higher sometimes.”
Beyond Yaxtché, Argenta has defined more than 20 exploration targets, most of them gold-copper. “It was explored only three percent of the property when we acquired this,” Marias said. Crews have since covered about 30%.
The company is funded through the resource update, he said. “We have 24 million Canadian dollars in the bank. That can get us through the mineral resource update, and even further into 2027.”
Asked about Argentina’s presidential election next year, Marias offered what he called a personal view: that the country’s shift toward mining investment under President Javier Milei will hold. “I don’t think that whatever is coming, it’s going to be what we had before,” he said.
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