Silver47 Begins Metallurgical Testwork to Confirm Reprocessing Potential of Historic Mine Tailings at Hughes, Nevada

Silver47 Exploration Corp. has initiated metallurgical testwork to assess the feasibility of reprocessing historic tailings at the Belmont deposit on its Hughes property in Nevada. The tailings contain NI 43-101 compliant inferred resources totaling 1.8 million ounces of silver and 11,000 ounces of gold, representing a potentially significant precious metals resource that has never been systematically evaluated with modern extraction techniques.

The initiative reflects how current silver market conditions have transformed the economics of historic mining waste. CEO Galen McNamara noted that when Howard Hughes' Summa Corporation evaluated the tailings in the 1970s, silver prices of $4-5 per ounce made reprocessing uneconomical. Today's silver pricing environment has fundamentally altered these calculations, making the asset potentially viable for modern processing methods.

The Hughes property represents a compelling opportunity for Silver47 due to its status as a fully owned, private-land asset requiring minimal new surface disturbance. The company is calculating silver equivalent grades using $20 per ounce silver and $1,800 per ounce gold, with assumed metallurgical recoveries of 90% for silver and 95% for gold. This conservative approach to resource evaluation suggests strong potential upside if actual recoveries exceed these assumptions.

For the precious metals sector, this development illustrates the growing trend of companies re-evaluating historic mining waste as commodity prices rise and processing technologies improve. Silver47's systematic approach to metallurgical testing could serve as a model for unlocking value from similar tailings deposits across North America's historic mining districts.