Regardless of if it’s gold, copper or silver mining company, it can take years before a mining company can get from deposit to mining activities and revenue.
During that time, a lot of money gets invested without any promise of return.
However, one way to make that exercise less expensive is to already have a mine producing ore and revenue that can help add cash into the miner’s bank account.
It is this approach to growth that GoGold Resources (TSX:GGD) is looking to take advantage of.
With an existing mine, its ambitions are to expand its production beyond its current operations. The question is how successfully it can turn that potential into a much larger mining business.
How Parral is helping GoGold fund its growth
Before we get to GoGold’s growth plans, let’s look at what it already has.
It’s Parral Tailings property, located in Chihuahua, Mexico, holds millions of tonnes of old waste left behind by centuries of historical silver and other base metal mining operations. However, given that old technology wasn’t very efficient, a 2020 study calculated that 15.4 million tonnes of reserves (8.7 million proven, 6.7 million probable) remain on site.
In 2026, just under 1.9 million ounces of silver-equivalent were produced from this mine, with the last three years averaging around 1.8 million ounces. It also produced around 11,647 ounces of gold in 2026.
Given Parral is a tailings mine, where the resources are being extracted from existing waste rather than traditional mining, the cost of setting the mine up was significantly cheaper than a traditional mine. However, sometimes the cost of operating a producing tailings mine can be equal to or exceed that of a normal mine.
GoGold’s all-in sustaining cost, the total estimated cost to produce one ounce of material, was around US$22 to US$28 an ounce.
GoGold’s plans to expand beyond its existing silver mine
However, Parral, given it is largely a pile of waste, the resource to be mined is finite.
In fact, recent management commentary estimates that the mine has around four years of remaining reserve life left. This emphasises GoGold’s need to find new deposits to mine if it wants to continue operating past that date.
GoGold believes they have an answer, again in Mexico.
Los Ricos is a 24,000-hectare site located in the Jalisco region of Mexico that is split into two projects (North and South).
Los Ricos South was launched in March 2019, and a preliminary economic assessment was announced in January 2021, which estimated the net present value of the mine at around US$295 million. A mineral resource estimate conducted in 2025 gave a base net present value of US$355 million, and construction was commenced in June 2026.
