Golden Minerals has announced that it will stop operations at its Velardeña site less than three months after it restarted production.  

The Velardeña site, located in Durango, Mexico, was officially brought back into operation in December 2023. Prior to this, mining had been suspended at Velardeña since 2015, when low metal prices, mining dilution and metallurgical challenges made operations unviable.  

Following the restart, the company planned to have the silver-gold mine reach a production rate of 150 tonnes per day by March 2024 and began mining in six stopes across the Velardeña property. However, in a 29 February press release, Golden Minerals revealed that “the initial performance of the mine and processing plant during the course of the initial several months of production has not achieved the results projected by the company”.  

In the wake of this decision, Golden Minerals is considering the future of the Velardeña properties, which may include their sale or even the winding up of certain parts of its Mexican operations. The company owns several other projects in Mexico, including the Yoquivo gold and silver project, which is currently in the exploration stage.  

Following the announcement, Golden Minerals saw its stock price plunge. In the afternoon preceding the statement, Golden Minerals stock was trading on the NYSE at $0.5309, but by 10:55am on 29 February, a little over four hours after the announcement, the price had hit a low of $0.2655.