by Steve St. Angelo
SRSRocco Report
The era of high-grade silver mines may be coming to an end. Remarkably, the top primary silver miners’ average yield fell to the lowest ever in 2019. Which begs the question, will high-grade silver mines become extinct in the not-so-distant future? Well, if we look at the data, it seems to be already happening.
Since I started researching the primary silver mining industry, the yields at many high-grade silver mines have fallen drastically. For example, Fresnillo PLC’s Flagship mine, the Fresnillo Mine, had seen its average yield decline from 15 oz/t (ounce per tonne) in 2005 to only 5.3 oz/t last year. That is one hell of a reduction in just 14 years… nearly 10 oz/t of silver yield evaporated.