GoGold completed a 10,000m Phase I drilling programme in October and immediately began Phase II using three drill rigs to define the mineralised halo around historical high-grade ore shoots exploited by the underground workings as it works towards producing a maiden mineral resource estimate in March 2020.

"We still see a broader mineralised zone of over 20m at [depth] which may be amenable to deeper bulk mining and also shows a high-grade core within these broader zones which may represent underground mining targets," said president and CEO Brad Langille.

The company is working to define an open-pittable resource of a million ounces and another million which can be exploited by underground mining, which it believes may make the project of interest to bigger mining companies. GoGold sold its Santa Gertrudis gold and silver operation in Sonora to Agnico Eagle in 2017 for $80 million.

Los Ricos, about 100km north-west of Gaudalajara, covers over 22,000 hectares and is home to several historical mining operations. The company accelerated the acquisition of the project in August after research into the historical mine that operated in the early twentieth century uncovered a trove of documents.

"We found the mine archive that includes underground surveys, grind size, recoveries and over 8,000 underground samples. We digitised this information and put it into a block model and that is what is guiding our drilling. The old mine took out 2-6m from the 15-20m wide vein and what they left is what we are seeing in our drilling," corporate development manager Steve Low told Mining Journal.

GoGold is funding exploration at Los Ricos from cash flow from its Parral silver operation, which production 580,711 silver equivalent ounces in the third quarter, consisting of 326,625oz silver and 2,921oz gold. It had about $9 million in cash and equivalents at the end of September and has a burn rate of about $800,000 a month.

Shares in GoGold Resources are trading at C60c, valuing the company at $111 million.