2016 may be a noteworthy year for the Canadian-based Arizona Mining Inc. The resource company has made big gains on its Hermosa property, located 80 km southeast of Tucson, Arizona. With an 80 percent share of the property, Arizona Mining has been the catalyst behind the exploration of the site’s resource deposits over the last five years.

“The Taylor Deposit, a lead-zinc-silver carbonate replacement deposit, has a resource of 39.4 million tonnes in the Inferred Mineral Resource category grading 11% zinc equivalent (“ZnEq”) utilizing a 6 percent ZnEq cut off grade calculated in accordance with NI 43-101 guidelines,” notes the Arizona Mining website.

In order to gauge the viability of the site’s potential, “Arizona compiled a wealth of historic data — areas of Hermosa were previously explored by the American Smelting and Refining Co. (Asarco) — and combined it with an airborne versatile time domain electromagnetic survey in 2011,” as Northern Miner reporter, Matthew Keevil, writes.

Upon completing the comprehensive mapping and research phase, Arizona Mining ran a promising drill campaign that showed the potential of the site’s mineral and resource deposits.

“This is a perfect geological story in terms of zonation for these types of deposits. It was really just a matter of getting ourselves oriented and proceeding with the drilling as we move towards what is likely an intrusive source. It definitely looks like we’ve found the right location because we’ve had some wonderful drill intercepts,” said Arizona Mining’s Chief Operating Officer, Donald Taylor.

Arizona Mining is led and founded by Richard Warke, a mining veteran and serial entrepreneur who has founded multiple multimillion and billion dollar resource companies in the past, including Ventana Gold Corporation and Augusta Resource Corporation.

“The metallurgical tests we conducted on the site were very promising,” Richard Warke noted. “We are also invested in a silver-manganese manto oxide development project on another section of the same property.”

A 2013 open-pit pre-feasibility test found probable reserves of nearly 60 million tonnes grading 68 grams silver per tonne and 8.3 percent manganese on site.

Richard Warke also enlisted the assistance of James Gowans, a resource and mining executive with a history in the metallurgical and engineering sector. Gowans, the former CEO of De Beers Canada and co-president of Barrick Gold, sees great potential in the developments at the Taylor Deposit.

“I was retiring from Barrick and moving back to the Vancouver area when I got a call from Richard Warke about the project opportunity, and lead-zinc deposits are sort of like coming home for me,” Gowans said in an interview.

In mid-November 2015, Richard Warke announced Gowans’ appointment to the Presidency of Arizona Mining.

Since coming on board, the deposit numbers have been upgraded and now comprise 39.4 million tonnes in accordance with the NI 43-101 Inferred Mineral Resource category grading.

“This updated resource estimate confirms what the drill results and geology have been telling us for some time – that we have the potential makings of a significant zinc/lead/silver deposit,” says Gowans. “All drill holes completed since we initiated the drill campaign in the fall of 2014 encountered relatively high grade sulfide mineralization over significant thicknesses.”