en.Wedoany.com Reported - Black Bear Minerals (ASX:BKB) has reported that reanalysis of historical core from its Shafter Silver Project in Texas, USA, has revealed higher silver grades and polymetallic mineralization than historical data indicated.
Preliminary results from the reanalysis confirm that several drill holes have returned higher silver grades compared to historical results. Drill hole SW5 returned 6.7 meters at 408 g/t silver from 9.1 meters depth, including 1.2 meters at 1,222 g/t silver; the historical intercept was 6.7 meters at 266 g/t silver from 9.1 meters, representing a 54% increase. Drill hole 201200306 returned 23.8 meters at 147 g/t silver from 5.5 meters depth, including 10.4 meters at 231 g/t silver; the historical reported result for this hole was 23.8 meters at 134 g/t silver from 4.9 meters depth. Drill hole 201200602 returned 3.1 meters at 181 g/t silver, 0.70 g/t gold, 1.1% lead (Pb), and 3.4% zinc (Zn) from surface; the gold peak occurred at 1.8 meters depth, with 1.2 meters at 1.50 g/t gold. The original result for this drill hole was 3.1 meters at 134 g/t silver from surface.
The reanalysis program also identified gold mineralization in historical core that had not previously been analyzed for gold. Black Bear Minerals stated that these results reveal the polymetallic potential of the project area beyond the existing foreign mineral resource estimate (MRE), which only includes silver.
Chief Executive Officer Dennis Lindgren said the reanalysis results demonstrate an increase in silver grades, with a 54% improvement across the entire interval, confirming peak grades of up to 1,222 g/t silver. He noted that these findings enhance the company's confidence in the quality, continuity, and growth potential of the Shafter mineralized system, and provide a clear basis for expanding the historical core reanalysis program to support key work such as advancing JORC resource conversion, continuing exploration, and restart studies for Shafter.
The Shafter Silver Project is located in Presidio County, Texas, within a 1,600-kilometer-long basin carbonate sequence extending from northern Mexico into southwestern Texas, USA. The area lies on the extension of Mexico's Eastern Sierra Madre Belt, which hosts the Peñasquito mine. The mineralized zone in the central part of the project trends approximately 4 kilometers east-west and was historically mined as the Presidio Mine from 1883 to 1942, producing 35.2 million ounces of silver at an average grade of 521 g/t silver.
Black Bear Minerals first announced the foreign resource estimate for the project in October 2025, prepared in accordance with Canadian NI 43-101 standards. The company attributed the increase in silver grades to additional wall rock assays and expanded sampling around historical mineralized intervals, and stated that multi-element and gold analyses have revealed polymetallic mineralization beyond the historical silver-only resource.
Black Bear Minerals plans to extend the reanalysis to more historical drill hole projects and cover a larger area of the foreign resource estimate. Additionally, the company plans to conduct limited infill drilling to support the conversion of the foreign resource into an initial JORC mineral resource estimate and advance a rapid mine restart study. Meanwhile, the company is updating its geological model and plans further drilling to test mineralization extensions beyond the current resource estimate.
