Hecla doubles exploration budget
Precious metals miner Hecla plans to nearly double its investment in exploration and predevelopment, with the goal of replacing or exceeding yearly reserve depletion.
The company has earmarked $55-million for investment in exploration and predevelopment, focusing on Nevada, Greens Creek in Alaska, Keno Hill in Yukon Territory and Lucky Friday in Idaho.
This compared with an investment of $25.2-million in exploration and corporate development and $2.5-million in predevelopment activities last year.
At the end of 2025, Hecla had silver reserves of 231-million ounces after producing 17-million ounces. Greens Creek produced 8.7-million ounces of silver, while growing the reserve base by 2.4-million ounces. Lucky Friday produced a record 5.3-million ounces of silver and replaced 5-million in the reserve.
The company measured and indicated silver resources of 161-million ounces and inferred silver resources of 468-million ounces.
Proven and probable gold reserves were 2-million ounces.
“Our 231-million ounces of reserves at year-end 2025 reflects refined technical standards we've implemented across our reserve modelling as we’ve learned from mining these deposits, strengthening the quality and credibility of our estimates,” said president and CEO Rob Krcmarov.
“Looking ahead, we're signalling our confidence in future reserve replacement by nearly doubling our exploration budget in 2026 compared to the prior year. This elevated investment at our core assets positions us to more than replace reserves on a go-forward basis and sustain the industry’s best average reserve mine life.”
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