Americas Gold and Silver: six new silver discoveries at Galena — and antimony now pays

The pitch Oliver Turner makes for Americas Gold & Silver Corp (USAS) is simple: this was a company that spent roughly a decade too underfunded to explore its own mines, and the drill results now coming out are what new money buys. Speaking to The Deep Dive at the Beaver Creek Precious Metals Summit in an interview published 28 September 2026, Turner — part of the team that took over the business in early 2025 — says fresh exploration capital has already uncovered six new silver zones at the flagship Galena mine in Idaho.

## Two operating mines, one silver focus

Turner describes two producing assets. The flagship is Galena in northern Idaho's historic Silver Valley, a district he notes viewers may know from neighbors such as the Lucky Friday and Sunshine mines. Galena has operated for well over a hundred years and, Turner says, holds more than 200 million ounces of silver in resource at an average grade of about 500 grams per tonne (g/t — how much silver sits in each tonne of ore). He stresses these are true silver grades, not "silver-equivalent" figures that fold byproduct metals into the headline.

The second producer is Cosalá in Mexico, a primary silver mine where the company is mining a deposit called EC120 and has, in Turner's words, had "phenomenal" drilling results lately. Together he expects the two mines to build a silver production profile of 3.2 to 3.6 million ounces this year. Two more assets sit outside the production story: San Felipe, an exploration project, and Relief Canyon, a Nevada gold mine on care and maintenance (idled but kept ready, not producing).

## Six new discoveries in twelve months

The results that prompted the interview came out the week before, around a couple of new discoveries at Galena. Turner says the company has identified six new discoveries there in the past twelve months, all from in-mine exploration drilled adjacent to existing infrastructure. Location matters here: a vein found beside a working mine can reach a mill with far less new capital and time than a discovery in untouched ground.

The intercepts, as he describes them, run multiple meters at up to roughly a kilogram of silver per tonne — about 1,000 g/t. The strangest hit came from ground the team believed was vein-free: while cross-cutting to site a new raise-bore (a vertical opening drilled between mine levels), Galena cut half a meter grading about 7 kilograms per tonne — roughly 7,000 g/t — in a brand-new vein system. Turner frames a century of surprises like this as normal for Galena, and expects more as spending continues.

## Antimony: from penalty to paid byproduct

The other thread is antimony, a minor metal with defense and industrial uses. Galena handles two ore types, Turner explains: tetrahedrite ore carrying silver, copper and antimony, and galena ore carrying silver and lead. The company is ramping up the tetrahedrite side, which also carries the higher silver grades — so the copper and antimony come out alongside the silver it is already chasing.

Per Turner, Galena has produced antimony every day since 1942, when output was ramped up for the US war effort in the Second World War alongside the neighboring Sunshine mine. The economics changed when the company renegotiated its concentrate contract (the deal with the buyer of its concentrate): under the old terms the company was paid only for silver and lead, copper went unpaid, and antimony was charged as a penalty. Now every byproduct is paid.

Even so, he says antimony payability — the share of a concentrate's metal value the buyer actually pays for — remains modest, because the company already pays to drill, blast, hoist, crush, grind, float, concentrate and ship the ore for silver's sake. The answer is a partnership with US Antimony, announced this past February: a small antimony leaching facility in the Silver Valley intended to lift recoveries and payabilities, after which US Antimony can sell the metal to buyers including, potentially, the US government. Turner is explicit that this is a byproduct bonus, not a pivot: "we still remain a silver-focused company."

## What to watch over the next twelve months

Asked what investors should track, Turner stays operational. The shaft at Galena is fully upgraded, the mining method is being reworked, and muck handling — moving broken ore out of the mine — is being improved. His markers for the year ahead: continued de-bottlenecking (clearing the constraints that cap how much ore the mine can move), ramping tonnages at Galena, and more high-grade exploration results.

## The fine print

This is a single management interview, part of summit coverage sponsored by Goliath Resources, and every figure above is the speaker's account of his own company. The claims are specific enough to check against company releases, but they remain the company's framing of its own turnaround, not an independent assessment.