Coeur Ups Proven and Probable Reserves at Palmarejo Mine

Coeur Mining Inc. (NYSE:CDE) announced that it’s added 25.4 million ounces of silver and 376,000 ounces of gold to the proven and probable reserves at its Mexico-based Palmarejo mine. Those are increases of 89 and 76 percent, respectively, compared to the end of 2014.

In total, Palmarejo now holds reserves of 54 million ounces of silver and 876,000 ounces of gold.

Further highlights include:

(Comparisons below refer to the addition of the Independencia resource as of April 23, 2015 to Palmarejo’s total year-end 2014 resource)

• Measured and indicated silver resources decreased 19% to 21.0 million ounces
• Measured and indicated gold resources decreased 25% to 304,000 ounces
• Inferred silver resources increased 47% to 15.1 million ounces
• Inferred gold resources increased 33% to 318,000 ounces
• Paramount acquisition adds 36.8 million silver equivalent ounces to Palmarejo’s reserves with an average grade of 10.65 AgEq oz/ton
• Guadalupe and Independencia represent 94% of Palmarejo’s total reserves with a combined average grade of 10.05 silver equivalent oz/ton
• 35% of Palmarejo’s total reserves are not subject to any non-government royalty or streaming obligation

Mitchell J. Krebs, president and CEO of Coeur, commented:

Closing the acquisition of Paramount has further enabled Palmarejo’s transition to a high-grade, high-margin underground operation and is an important milestone in Coeur’s strategic repositioning. These new Independencia reserves represent a 12% increase to our companywide silver equivalent reserves and boost our overall silver equivalent reserve grade by 10%. Importantly, ore mined from Independencia Este is not subject to any non-government royalty or streaming obligation, which will further boost Palmarejo’s margins and cash flow. With the Independencia deposit as a second source of high-grade silver and gold to supplement the rising production rates from the Guadalupe deposit, we anticipate Palmarejo will become our lowest cost and largest mine, contributing approximately half of Coeur’s $190-$200 million of expected free cash flow in 2017.

Palmarejo now has an expected mine life of around seven years of high-grade underground mining based on these reserves. We expect to further extend the mine life based on the significant amount of mineralization contained in the resource categories and based on the continued drilling success we are having at Guadalupe, at Independencia, and on targets located between these two growing deposits.

Click here to read the full Coeur Mining Inc. (NYSE:CDE) press release.