Tom Kaplan's Electrum has earned 60% of Cerro Las Minitas by spending US$5 million on exploration. Southern Silver remains the JV operator.

The pair has committed a further $3 million for exploration this year.

The new 13,000m planned campaign will include up to 10,000m of core drilling on and along strike from the promising Skarn Front deposit, out to the south-east in the Las Victorias target area and along strike to the north-east in the North Skarn area.

"Mineralization in the Las Victorias zone is open for approximately 500m along strike to the south-east of drill holes 17CLM-101 and -105," Southern Silver said this week.

"Two separate mineralized zones are identified in these holes and believed to be the lateral extensions of the Blind and Skarn Front zones, respectively. As presently modelled, mineralization in Las Victorias zone is open laterally to the south-east and to depth.

"Drilling in the North Skarn zone will test a 600m projection of Skarn Front mineralization along strike to the north-east, where the zone wraps around the northern margin of the Central Intrusion.

"Multiple higher grade mineralized intercepts occur on the margin of the defined mineral resource in this area where two potential mineralized shoots are identified that require testing."

The JV also plans to complete up to 3,000m of RC drilling to test targets in the CLM West claim area where more than 4,500 surface samples collected over the past nine months are said to have identified "multiple clusters and linear trends of anomalous precious-metal and pathfinder elements in surface rock chip and float samples".

"This largely gravel covered area which covers the eastern margin of a broad Tertiary volcanic basin which elsewhere hosts productive gold-silver-enriched epithermal quartz vein systems at the Avino gold-silver mine, 10km north-west of the property boundary, and at the La Preciosa deposit 25km to the west of the claim block."

Southern Silver and Electrum have outlined indicated resources containing 20.7 million oz of silver, 131Mlb lead and 870Mlb zinc, and inferred resources with an estimated 33.6Moz silver, 319Mlb of lead and 813Mlb zinc at Cerro Las Minitas, in Durango.

Southern Silver has a current market capitalisation of about C$24.6 million trading at 26c. The shares were at 38c on January 16 this year and 49c around this time last year.