The Gold Report Interview with Eric Coffin "SilverCrest Mines Inc. announced a silver resource of 199 Moz at La Joya. It's a low-grade, polymetallic skarn: silver, copper, gold, lead and zinc. The company followed that up with a pretty good PEA: an after-tax NPV% of $93M and a 22% IRR for a 'starter pit' operation that is focused on the highest-grade portion of the resource. . .[the] management is the main reason I like it. Chairman Scott Drever, President Eric Fier and CFO Barney Magnusson have been a team since day one. They are all well experienced in both exploration and putting mines into production.
"That experience really showed with Santa Elena, SilverCrest's Sonora mine. It has good grades and pretty much an even mix between gold and silver in value. The team has managed to get it financed at the bottom of the market in 2009, which was no easy feat, and built it for a little more than $20M, which is pretty amazing. It's producing silver equivalent at $8.50/oz. That's quite a bit better than most. Santa Elena expansion is most of the way through. Santa Elena started out as a heap leach, but SilverCrest is building a mill, which should start production early next year. That should bring the company up from, say, 2.5 Moz Aqeq to close to 3.5 Moz next year. As the mine gets into deeper, higher-grade material, it should surpass 4 Moz silver equivalent in 2015. La Joya will be more difficult, but I definitely wouldn't bet against management building it on time and on budget and making sure it makes money."