Silver Mines in Australia — Who’s Digging, and Where?

Where are Australia's silver mines?

Silver has played a role in Australia since the mid-1800s — Wheal Gawler, the country's first metal mine, was a silver-lead mine developed in South Australia in the 1840s.

And that’s not Australia’s only early silver-mining operation — the Broken Hill deposit in New South Wales and the Mount Isa deposit in Queensland are two other early Australian silver discoveries.

Broken Hill, a lead-zinc-silver deposit, was discovered in 1883 by German immigrant Charles Rasp, and the Broken Hill Proprietary Company was born in 1885; it ultimately merged in 2001 with another mining giant, Billiton, to form BHP Billiton — now just known as BHP Group( ASX:BHP,NYSE:BHP,LSE:BLT). BHP is no longer involved with Broken Hill, but ore is still being extracted there today. Perilya now operates the mines.

For its part, Mount Isa was discovered in 1923 by John Campbell Miles, and like Broken Hill is still producing today. It was acquired by Glencore (LSE:GLEN,OTC Pink:GLCNF) in 2013, and in addition to silver it also produces zinc.

These major early Australian silver discoveries are not the country’s only sources of silver. Other silver mines in Australia include Cannington, one of the world’s top primary silver producers and, along with Mount Isa, one of the top five silver mines in Australia. It’s a fly-in, fly-out mining and processing operation that is owned by South32 (ASX:S32,LSE:S32), a diversified resource company spun out from BHP in 2015. Cannington also produces lead and zinc.

The other three top silver mines in Australia are the Tritton, Golden Grove and Hellyer mines:

• Tritton, owned by Aeris Resources (ASX:AIS,OTC Pink:ARSRF), is primarily a copper mine, but it still has reserves of approximately 2.9 million ounces of silver.

• Owned by 29Metals (ASX:29M), the Golden Grove mine holds copper, zinc and silver, with 24.29 million ounces of the precious metal in reserves.

• Hellyer, owned by NQ Minerals (OTCQB:NQMLF,AQSE:NQMI), holds 22.87 million ounces of silver.

Australia hosts the McArthur River mine as well, which opened in 1995 and is owned by Glencore subsidiary McArthur River Mining. The mine is one of the world’s largest zinc-lead-silver mines, and is located in Australia’s Northern Territory. The mine has an estimated 120 million ounces of silver in reserves.

The Century mine, which previously belonged to MMG (HKEX:1208), shut its doors at the end of 2015, but was a major producer of zinc (and silver) until that time. It was reopened in mid-2018 by New Century Resources (ASX:NCZ,OTC Pink:NWNNF) and the company says it now has an estimated 568,000 tonnes of zinc and 19.85 million ounces of silver in mineral resources.

Independence Group (ASX:IGO) also produces silver, along with copper and zinc, at its Jaguar operation in Western Australia. Gold producer Silver Lake Resources (ASX:SLR,OTC Pink:SVLKF) owns some projects with silver reserves as well. As you can see, there are and have been many silver mines in Australia.

Future silver mines in Australia?

In addition to being home to a slew of large silver mines, Australia also plays host to many companies that are exploring and developing silver projects. Below are a few that have made recent progress.

Please let us know in the comments if we’ve forgotten to mention any Australia-focused silver companies. All companies listed had market caps of at least AU$5 million on April 29, 2023.

• Argent Minerals (ASX:ARD,OTC Pink:ARDNF) — Argent Minerals’ main asset is its 100 percent owned Kempfield polymetallic project in New South Wales, which holds an estimated 52 million silver equivalent ounces. In total, the company has three projects, all of which are in New South Wales.

• Investigator Resources (ASX:IVR) — Investigator Resources is advancing silver, copper and gold deposits in South Australia. Currently its properties include Paris, Greater Peterlumbo and Stuart Shelf. The total resource for Paris stands at an estimated 53.1 million ounces of contained silver and 97,600 tonnes of contained lead at a cut-off level of 30 grams per tonne (g/t) silver. The indicated component is 12.7 million tonnes at 95 g/t silver and represents 73 percent of the total estimated resource ounces.

• Horizon Minerals (ASX:HRZ) — Horizon Minerals owns the Nimbus silver-zinc project in Western Australia. Nimbus has a high-grade silver-zinc resource estimate of 255,898 tonnes at 773 g/t silver and 13 percent zinc; the total Nimbus resource stands at 1.21 million tonnes at 52 g/t silver.

• Silver Mines (ASX:SVL,OTC Pink:SLVMF) — Silver Mines bills itself as a leading Australian silver exploration company, and its most notable asset is its Bowdens silver project. While the company’s main focus has been the Webbs silver project in New South Wales, Bowdens is the largest undeveloped silver project in Australia. In April of this year, Silver Mines received final development approval for Bowdens, meaning it can now move through development and towards production. A 2018 feasibility study shows average silver production of 3.4 million tonnes per annum for the project, with 5.4 million tonnes during the first three years of operation. Estimates also include 6,900 tonnes of zinc and 5,100 tonnes of lead.