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Eloro Resources is drilling down deep in Bolivia on a project that literally has a silver lining.

In just more than one year, the Toronto-based miner has completed 40,000 metres of exploratory drilling at the Iska Iska site in the southern, silver-rich Potosi Department where the company has discovered a significant silver-tin deposit.

Dr. Bill Pearson, Eloro’s vice president of exploration said Iska Iska has the potential to be “world class.”

“It has a very attractive collection of metals, in particular silver, tin, zinc, lead, copper, gold, indium, cadmium and bismuth,” Pearson said. “And it has huge size potential. The area where we’re working to define a resource is only a small subset of this and it keeps getting bigger and growing.”

Pearson said the drilling has shown mineralization inside a porphyry-epithermal complex that extends over 2.5 kilometres long and up two km wide, down to a depth of more than one km.

The site is 10 km to the electricity grid, close to a major rail network and is a 48-km drive north of the city of Tupiza.

Projections on Iska Iska’s mine life and yield in ounces per year will have to wait until Eloro outlines its inferred National Instrument (NI) 43-101 estimate, expected in the second quarter of 2022, Pearson said.

“To go from a grassroots, never-been-drilled project 15 months ago to barreling towards your first NI (estimate) is very, very rapid in my books. This is just an outstanding, well-mineralized huge system,” he said.

Eloro has financed its planned 51,000 m of drilling in the current round of exploration, as well as its NI reports and metallurgical testing.

Once formalized later this year, the company will look to raise additional funds for its phase two drilling campaign. This will involve additional drilling between 70,000 and 90,000 metres, the preliminary economic assessment and engineering work.

“For budget purposes all of our costs are [about] $317 per metre including drilling, assaying and road building. I’m sure we’re going to end up with a budget of $38 million to $44 million plus to really go after this,” Pearson said.

Iska Iska sits on a mining property owned by Bolivian firm Empresa Minera Villegas and Eloro made a deal to acquire a 99-per cent interest in the property by 2024.

Eloro CEO Tom Larsen said the company has so far paid $3.8 million towards the $12.7 million total for the deal.

“This is probably going to be one of the largest discoveries in many years in Bolivia. We’re going forward with the payment sooner rather than later,” he said.

Larsen added that the workforce at Iska Iska is almost completely Bolivian and the Villegas family is a respected local benefactor that operates several businesses.

The project poses few social conflict issues because no communities are on the property and no artisanal miners operate in the area.

“With the government [and] community being supportive, we’re not dealing with our property being barricaded by communities that don’t want to see a mine happen there,” Pearson said. “Bolivia is a strong mining country, it’s really important to the country. I don’t see that there’s going to be a massive problem with getting permits eventually.”

Eloro Resources has discovered a significant silver-tin deposit at its Iska Iska site in the southern, silver-rich Potosi Department. SUPPLIED

Eloro is optimistic that the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic has passed and looks forward to more laboratories resuming their work so the backlog of drill core samples can be tested.

Even though production has yet to start at Iska Iska, Eloro has been operating its Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) programs since last February.

In the surrounding communities in 2021, it completed several ESG activities including the construction of 120 sanitation stations consisting of toilets and sinks and for protection against COVID-19. It also supports school programs and baking and embroidery classes through the local women’s association.

“We have classes on health [and] there was a doctor talking [to women] about breast cancer. It’s all driven by what the community is interested in. We provide all the supplies for baking. [The programs] have been very successful and well-received,” Pearson said.

In 2022, existing ESG activities will continue, with plans to provide equipment to community medical centres and computers for schools. An additional 134 sanitation stations will also be built.

As work at Iska Iska expands, the company will put more money into ESG work and incorporate more communities.

“We prefer not to build our own ESG group. We prefer to be a facilitator and provide them with financing, material and training,” Pearson said.