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20:02 lot of work ahead and we are getting very busy, which is exciting. The Mexican team is excited to be busy and we are moving very, very fast, trying to take all the precautions in terms of COVID, but at the same time trying to be as efficient as possible. And moving forward, that's the target. So for this year, it's going to be San Lucas number 1, and then the rest as a number 2, let's say. Great, thank you. And Robert, what upcoming catalysts are there for Southern Silver? Yes, well, thank you. In terms of catalysts, We've actually already had one, and which of course was the purchase of the 100% control of the Cerro Las Menidas project.
20:53 That was completed last fall, and at that point, our trading volume increased markedly and our share price increased about 2 to 3 times. This has now left us well poised to move into 2021 and continue exploration, continued resource expansion. In the first part of 2021, we were able to release the results from high-grade assays. So sometimes, you know, over 6 meters thick of 1200 grams per tonne silver equivalent, 8 meters thick of over 2000 grams per tonne silver equivalent. So a very high-grade mineralization that's really showing just the quality of the target that we are now drilling on where we call the east side of the Cerro.
21:48 These are areas that have not been incorporated into any prior mineral resource estimate. And so we have, I guess, a total now of over 30 drill holes into this target area. We've had high grade results come out and we expect over the next 3, 4 months to have additional high grade results come out from our drilling. At that point, we will do a 43-101 resource update. So basically identify the deposits in that area. These will be cumulative to the already significant resource that we have on the project. And then in the latter part of the year and heading into 2022, we'll be looking at rolling that into a preliminary economic assessment and then basically putting an economic value, again, a preliminary one, but an economic value on the deposit. So those are all things that a series of milestones, but as well a series of catalysts that will trigger as we move through 2021.
23:07 Great, thank you. So let's talk about each of your jurisdictions in Mexico. What makes your region in Mexico or Mexico in general a great jurisdiction for silver exploration? Marcio? First, let's talk about Mexico. Mexico is a mining country. It's the largest silver producer in the world. The largest silver producer company in the world is a Mexican company, Fresnillo. And it happens that they have projects around our projects in the same district. So commercially, legally and financially is well integrated in some way of all the documentation with the North American market, US and Canada that helps a lot. The history of mining in Mexico provides a lot of people with skills, a lot of districts with mining history.
23:55 So mining is not new, so you're not arriving in an area that is the first time a company is going to put a drill hole. So that helps a lot to bring people to be aware and get involved. This company, for example, have 95% of the employees Mexicans today. We have 20 geologists working in the Rosario mining district. So we've been doing business in Mexico, key founders, shareholders, including myself for more than 15 years. And we take very, we believe that's very important really to get to know the people, the language and understand the country. Be fluent in Spanish to negotiate and work is very important. Going to the region, Sinaloa, where we have the project. There's a mining district. There's a history of mining. Like I said, big companies like Grupo Mexican familiar with the operating area, even building projects.
24:45 That shows how attractive it is. The jurisdiction, Sinaloa together with the country, is mine-friendly. Sometimes it can be a bit bureaucratic, but that's the nature of the business in Latin America. But the key points of the game, all the steps are well known. There is no surprise. There are a lot of discussions in Mexico, talking again about the counter, about taxation, because of the new government. Mining is an important component in the industry, but oil and gas is far more important than hard rock mining. So it's very common in any country around the world, in my past experience as a banker, that as soon as commodity prices start to go up, governments start talking about taxes.
25:33 So it doesn't happen overnight. At the end of the day, executives like we 3 here need to be aware and try to find the highest grade projects as we can, keep the margin there. One thing about Mexico, particularly in the lower and other states in Mexico, my colleagues might comment this, there's always a concern about safety because of the whole widespread problem about safety in Mexico. It's case by case, you just need to be aware and bring that into account in your day-to-day planning to make everybody safe. The same is COVID. We see that the numbers of cases in Mexico is really high. Just need to implement all the key aspects of safety to make everybody, all the employees, being taking care of themselves, their families, and behave properly at work, even outside of the work. But overall, mining-friendly country, very attractive, a good evidence of that in the last 2 weeks, more than 200 million Canadian dollars have been raised in the equity markets for silver companies with exploration projects, developing stage projects in Mexico.
26:39 Oh yes, absolutely. Carlos, what makes your jurisdiction in Mexico so great for Silver aspiration? Well, after Marcio did such a great overview about Mexico, there's not much left as a country, but because he really captured the essence of Mexico. But really, on top of that, it's proximity to Canada. And because of this history on mining, and Canada being a mining country, it's a lot of synergies for many, many years. So it's, as Marcio said, mentioned, it's people are not going crazy to see that you are drilling.
27:28 They know the process. You have a lot of local suppliers also with a high quality skilled people and equipment and so on that makes your life easy in Mexico. In our case also, if you see Mexico, Central Mexico and Northern Mexico have been mining for 5 centuries. So in our case, we are in Durango and Chihuahua, are 2 very, very traditional mining states as Sonora or Sinaloa. So a government, you know, in Mexico, you have those 3 levels, federal, state and municipal level. We have a great relationship with the 3 levels and particularly with the state and municipal level, where you are and the government is eager to help you to create more jobs and pay more taxes and move the local economy. So we've been very lucky to have an open conversation with the governments in Mexico and share the plans. And in the counterpart, they have been supporting us very, very much.
28:39 So we feel very comfortable. And as you probably noticed on my accent, I'm Mexican. So it's for me going back to Mexico and visit the projects and the communities and so on, it's just going back home. So it's personally for me, it's very easy to do it and take advantage of the network we have been building over the years in Mexico. So it's a natural place to be for us. Thank you, that's great. And Robert, what about your jurisdiction in Mexico? Yes, so there's In terms of Mexico itself as a jurisdiction, there's really not much more I can add that Marcio and Carlos haven't already said.
29:26 As a company, we've been operating in Mexico since 2005. And in terms of a number of the people, directors as well as executive, as well as number of the employees of the company, They've been working in Mexico for no longer than that into the early 90s, mid 90s. Southern Silver is part of a group of junior exploration companies that also at one point featured Western Silver, which developed the Penn Mosquito Mine. And that's now one of Gold Corp's flagship projects. And so when Southern was started, we ended up utilizing a number of the people that were part of the Western Silver team.
30:24 And so they've been able to help us navigate jurisdictional issues that may come up to it, both on the administrative side as well as the technical side. So I think it's left Southern a great advantage. The area that we're working in is great. It's Southeast Durango. We're out, as I like to joke, we're on the edge of the Alta Plano and as I like to joke, we're out in the middle of the bean fields, not the marijuana fields. And so it makes it a very, very safe area to work. I've been going in and out of the project, this particular project since 2011. I've never had to have security. There's never been any sort of issue.
31:11 We've met with the state governor on 3 different occasions and his minister of economy on, I think, 4 different occasions. So we have great support from the state. And we've been very proactive, I believe, in terms of working with the local authorities, the municipal authorities, the local Ajito. And again, the area where we're working in, it's a very mature exploration and mining district. And so the local people understand the process and they like to see us active. We employ locally. The entire face of Southern Silver in Mexico is Mexican, whether that be our administration, our legal support, our geologists, our technical help and staff come from the local town of Guadalupe, Victoria, which is our base of operations.
32:17 And so, in that regard, we've had nothing but good experiences in, you know, working in Mexico and in that particular jurisdiction. As Murcio has mentioned, though, sometimes you do have bureaucratic issues. And those are probably the biggest impediment these days, is making sure that your tenure transactions and stuff get processed on time and making sure that those sorts of things are done. But again, we put people in place, locals that know the system, that have the connections within the system. And so to date, it's been great. Fantastic.
33:05 Thank you. Well, so I've got one more question before we're gonna open the floor up to the live Q&A. So to all our listeners, please continue to submit your questions and we'll get to them shortly. So to close things off, what's the biggest takeaway about your projects and your company that you want investors to leave this event with you today? GR Silver Mining, as I said earlier, business in Rosario, Rosario Mining Districts in Aloha. Today is the company that controls all the silver gold assets in that district. There's no record of any company being in such a position. We are very aggressively drilling, 5 drill rigs, so that means a lot of news flows to provide investors opportunity to see the value being added to the company.
33:50 Major catalyst, 2 resource estimations very soon, potential PEA by the end of the year, cash in the bank, and a large workforce in Mexico, including former Mexican authorities at the board level, showing that we know the business in Mexico, and we are very dedicated to that business in that district in Sinaloa in Mexico. Great, thank you so much. Carlos? Thank you very much, Dasha. Yeah, I just want to say to the audience. We were thinking in Monarca, think about this San Jose project which is a really new discovery today it's a geophysics discovery is not a recycling project from the past. So it's a great brand new adventure that we are having and it's still a really good time to join us.
34:46 The share performance has been performing really, really well for the last 8 months. For the last 6 months, we traded over 52 million shares. For a junior company, it's a really good liquidity, which is important for investors. But still, we are undervalued company. If we compare to some of our peers, we are trading probably around 60 cents per ounce of silver, which is like a 50% discount compared to most of the peers. So still we have a lot of room to grow. Recently on November, Red cloud analysis start following us. So it's, they have a couple of reports, 1 about Monarca, the other one recently about Silver, but also they included Monarca, but it's important for the investors to review as third party talking about your company. So we strongly believe this is just the beginning of a great story. So it's it's it's it's the role of and to invite the people to join us to this to this venture.
36:01 Thank you. And Robert. Yes, thank you, Dasha. I guess that the main takeaways from Southern Silver is the asset itself, the Cerro Las Menidas silver-lead zinc Scarn system located in Durango. It is one of the largest and highest grade undeveloped silver-based projects in the world. We've recently assumed 100% control of that asset. We're fully financed with over 9 million dollars currently sitting in the bank and we're well placed for further success on the project. The ultimate goal is to develop and continue exploring and developing this resource to make it a world-class deposit. And we believe that we are well on our way with the initial results from the first 10,000 meters of drilling and then future drilling as we head into 2021.
37:00 News to come, both from the drill hole as well as updates of resources. And then toward the end of the year, start wrapping all of that into economics and getting a proper economic assessment done on the project. Thank you. Great. Well, thank you all so much. We're going to jump right into the live Q&A portion because we've got a lot of questions here. So Vladimir has a question to all of the panelists. What is the availability of infrastructure, particularly power? And what is the cost of electricity, gas, and other resources, if any? So if possible, we can just go around the same order. Okay, about availability of power, the Plomozo's project was a pest producer mine. A high voltage power line was built in the 80s by the government and Grupo Mexico and is available on site.
37:54 The same happens to the La Trinidad that we are buying. There's a power line. About the average cost of kilowatt, I don't have the answer right now on top of my tongue, but we can probably provide the audience later. But it's far lower than what would be the average cost in Canada or US, I can guarantee it to you. Great. Carlos? Yeah, in the case of Monarca, our 3 projects are in a very easy access from the paved road. San Lucas is just like 5 kilometers from Argonaut Gold, from the Castillo complex. So we actually can just get in there on the road and from our property, you can see the mine of Argonaut.
38:44 And Tejamin, it's just like 10 kilometers of open road, let's say, not bad. And San Jose, it's another excellent location. We are like 120 kilometers west of Ciudad Juarez in a plain area, easy access, power, water. So it's not an issue. And in fact, the case of San Jose, it's a small community. So the relationship with this small community is great. So we have the resources, we have the people, and there's not really any issues around, so we are very comfortable there. Great, thank you. Robert? Yes, thank you. Again, You know, the area where we're working is a very mature mining district. We're immediately adjacent to the town of Guadalupe, Victoria, which has, again, it's a town of about 10,000, 15,000 people.
39:47 So there's a number of the amenities that one would want and require in terms of a base of operations. The project, or In terms of power, power lines that run down to the city of Durango run right through the project. Also, I guess, actually on the property is the transformer station that Vino Mining installed for to run their mine, which is located about 6 kilometers to the north of our property. So there is a terrific amount of infrastructure there. Again, in terms of the actual cost of the power, as Marcio said, yeah, I don't have that off the top of my head, but it is significantly less than if you were to use diesel generators to run your project.
40:49 In terms of doing spur lines off of the main power grid that runs right through the property, again, that's going to be significantly less than on projects where you might have to build a power line for 60 kilometers or 100 kilometers or several hundred kilometers or more. And so in that regard, power infrastructure, The water table is located just about 100 meters below surface. And so we actually are using water pumped from the underground workings, existing artisanal underground workings to run the program, the exploration program.
41:37 So water resources seem to be there. And so it's, again, a very good place to be working with a lot of the logistical aspects that one needs both to explore and to ultimately develop a mine. Great, thank you. Our next question here is, are there any new innovations in terms of metallurgical recovery of silver, both for oxide as well as sulfide-related silver deposits? I'll talk more about what we are doing at the Plomozo Silver Project. Plomozo was a lead-zinc historic mine. So we have a lot of data about the flotation for the lead and zinc with some production of silver in concentrates. What we are doing now, we believe that it's very common in modern technology now to leach the silver and the gold prior to concentrating the base metals from those materials that have base metals as a component.
42:37 We have seen in some initial work that we are doing that we can get better performance in mules and accretion mules to liberate silver as well and increase the recovery. And they use new reagents that are more environmental friendly and recover the silver. That's what we are doing. Great, Thank you. Carlos? Well, in our case, I am not able to comment on that because I'm not a technical person. But if I can get the contact of the person who asked this, I can follow up because basically over QP and executive VP of exploration, It's a geologist with more than 40 years of experience from exploration to production. He actually used to run one of the operations for a barrack in Arizona and Continental Gold in Columbia. So he has a lot of experience and already some plans for the different projects. So I prefer to follow up on this one. Yeah, absolutely.
43:42 That's a great point. We will be emailing out a survey to all the attendees and you'll have the opportunity to leave your contact information and ask any questions directly to each company. But Robert, do you have anything to add? Not really. Again, I'm on the geological exploration side, not on the metallurgical processing side. However, I would like to say just in terms of the metallurgical processing test work that we've done and completed to date, is that The Cerro Las Menidas system has a fairly basic metallurgy. It's basically Galena, which is the lead mineral, Stalorite, which is the zinc mineral, and then a little bit of Chalcopyrite, which is a copper mineral.
44:32 Most of the silver carries with the galena, with lead. And so it becomes a very basic and easily manageable flow sheet. You know, so a circuit processing circuit. So in terms of new methodologies, yeah, I can't really say, I do know though that our recoveries are quite good. And that I believe that is because of the relatively simple mineralogy that we have in the in our ores. All right. Thank you. Howard has a question. For silver is mining output worldwide beginning to decline or is it still rising?
45:26 My view is that in the last probably 10 years we haven't seen really a great number of big deposits, high-grade deposits coming out of being put in production. We need also to consider that a large portion of the silver is by-product of a lot of base metals mines. So, All these 2 components, like there's a lack of new projects and still relies on the byproduct of base metals mines. So I see that the overall has been a reduction, but not really a major decrease. And there's an environment here that we see that there's a continuous demand for more and more silver with new technologies. And a lot of exploration wasn't done in many cycles of the exploration history in many countries.
46:16 And we have silver districts still available. So for the future, we see that there's an opportunity to suppress supply, no, less supply, creating more demand and opportunity for high quality silver projects. Yeah. Thank you. Any other, anything else to add Carlos or Robert? Well, probably the only comment is besides Mexico, also Peru is a great producer of silver historically, but still it's a lot of unexplored regions in Peru, so probably it's gonna be also there's some news from that country as well. All right, thank you. Yeah, and again, I think Mauricio has said it quite well in terms of silver production. I believe it has been relatively stable.
47:13 Now, demand has sometimes fluctuated. And I think as we touched on earlier in the panel, physical demand for silver has really ramped up over the last little while as well, as people start becoming more aware of it and start looking at silver as a precious metal to basically act as a hedge on inflation or against inflation. So, yeah, I don't think there's been any significant increases or decreases. I think production, world production has stayed fairly stable. But as as Marcio has said that a lot of silver is byproduct. And so there are other factors that may play a role in the actual silver production, meaning that you can't just turn it on and just turn it on and dial it on and dial it off.
48:12 That you do end up getting squeezes at times and that reflects then in the silver price and again silver price of explorers and producers. Absolutely. This question is just for Marcio. What is the current waiting time for the labs to get results? Can you say again please? Can you repeat that? What is the current waiting time for the labs to get the results? It's a very interesting question because 1 year ago used to be probably 15 days and the pandemic when you were drilling because not many people drilling November came and everybody was drilling now suddenly if you get the assays back in 25 days you're lucky.
48:59 Yeah, they're getting busy. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So it's... All right, well John's asking what are the monthly burn rates for each company and how long before financing is needed? I feel anyone can. We have 5 million Canadian in the bank. The warrants are heavily in the money. They expire in June this year. They might bring probably close to 5.6 million Canadian dollars. Burn rate probably is close to between 400 to 500,000 Canadian dollars a month. So I think we are well set up for the year.
49:45 But like most of junior companies, we need to monitor the market and the share price. And I always look in a way to add value to the shareholders. If the transactions, the financing proposed for a company adds value, being large shareholders, people who would support the company, might be something that the company would look at. Great. Carlos? Yeah, and in our case, we're a smaller team, so the burn rate is something between $50,000 to $70,000. Most of the money goes really to the ground. And we have enough cash in the bank for the drilling program. We are planning to go for another financing after we finish the drilling program. We want to come to the market and share some results first and then share the plans for the next phase that we already have in mind.
50:45 But we want to wait probably, probably it's gonna be around in 3 months, something between May, June, when we do the next round. Great, thank you. Robert? Yeah, let's see. Right, burn rate. Sorry, excuse me. I was looking at one of the Q&As and so my mind started wandering. When we're drilling, we have 2 drills on the ground and we're drilling maybe around 2,500 meters a month right now. They're doing quite well. So our burn rate then with GNA is probably in the 300, maybe 325 per month.
51:33 And so we are fully financed at this 900,000 in the bank. We're getting warrants being exercised almost on a daily basis, certainly on a weekly basis. So at this point, I think we're fully financed for this year. And so we don't necessarily have to go to the market. And so I think some of that is, is it the right situation in terms of getting the right people into the, into the company and, or the right companies into the, into the company at this point. Great, thank you. We have another question for you, Robert. Can you discuss your metallurgy? Are there any issues that concern you?
52:22 No, no, actually, I'm very, very pleased with the metallurgy. To date, we've been able to identify 3 different concentrates being produced from our main deposit. It's known as the Scarnfront deposit, which is the largest of the 4 deposits that we've identified on the project to date. We've been able to produce a lead concentrate, a zinc concentrate and a copper concentrate, despite not having very much copper in the head grade. We've got over 90% recovery of silver, with about 83% of that going into the lead concentrate and the copper concentrate, which gives you better value on your silver price sales.
53:14 We have a terrific grade in the lead concentrate. I guess it's over an 80% recovery of lead and the grade is 68% within the concentrate, 5500 grams of silver in the concentrate. That's a very valuable concentrate. So, you know, there's, Peñoles has a smelter, a lead smelter, about 100 kilometers up the road. You know, so it's a very valuable concentrate for any of the smelters. Zinc is also doing well. We have just under a 95% recovery of zinc into the Zinc Con, and it's a 54% grade, which is a very clean concentrate. Again, quite valuable. Luckily, we've kept the amount of silver in that concentrate lower because you don't get the same value out of your silver in a zinc concentrate as you do in your leadier copper concentrates. So overall, that's all very good. There's a few small penalty items or penalty elements in there like cadmium and bismuth in the various concentrates.
54:27 They tend to be a single digit dollar or double digit, low double digit dollar penalties on concentrates that could have values as high as $3,500 in terms of the lead concentrate or $700, $800 a ton in terms of the zinc concentrate. So in that regard, yeah, everything looks good, seems good. Great, thank you so much. So we only have a few minutes, I'm just going to finish off with this last question from Derek. Regarding the tax issues 1st Majestic is dealing with, how concerned should miners be in Mexico? The information that's public domain is about the discussion about how the metal stream finance mechanism is perceived by the tax department against the other mining companies who have this valid alternative way of financing available to fund mines.
55:31 This is something that's becoming more than a hot topic because MetalStream was introduced to mining finance probably 10 years ago. I was heavily involved in a company named SilverCrest mines, became Silvercrest Metals, was probably one of the first in Mexico. It's a new way of financing mines, which are completely legal, that we can really look away to really access the market, the market to finance. The point is that I believe the tax department in Mexico is becoming more and more aware of this way of financing and is looking more into the details. It's really creating an environment that mining companies will need to be aware of in the future if they decide to finance mining projects using this type of finance.
56:20 Thank you. Carlos, do you have anything to add? No, no, I totally agree with Marci. Really? Perfect. Robert? Yeah, I'm merely the geologist. So I don't, I mean, I was aware that something was happening. I don't really know the details and of what's happening with that. Yeah, so I'll agree with Marcio. All right, well, thank you so much. That's all the time we have for today. I wanna thank you all for this great, incredible panel and taking us through the live Q&A. I also wanna thank everyone who submitted questions. If you didn't get a chance to get your questions answered or if you think of 1 after, like I said, we'll be emailing you at a survey and you'll be able to leave your contact details and we can put you in touch with any of these companies.
57:14 And as always, This is being recorded and you'll be able to watch it afterwards on six.com. And thank you again so much to Carlos, Marcio and Robert for taking your time and all your great insight today. Thank you. Thank you very much.
