Under the Spotlight – Daniel Rodriguez Mercado Minerals TSCV:MERC

2026.09.11

RM: This morning I’m here with Daniel Rodriguez. Daniel’s the CEO of Mercado Minerals which trades on the Canadian Stock Exchange under the symbol MERC.

The company has advanced from target mapping to executing diamond drilling at its current flagship Capolito project and securing land and community access agreements for surface sampling at their Zamora project.

The Capolito Project just had its first inaugural 25-hole diamond drill program. The company successfully proved that the silver-rich polymetallic system continues deeper and along the surface. Drilling has successfully hit and grown the known areas of silver, gold, lead, and zinc inside the project’s three main veins, the Five Sonores, El Agua, and El Pilar.

The company completed first-pass drill testing on several freshly found, undrilled vein structures, including El Piar Sur, El Medillo, and Chante.

Thanks to the 2026 exploration and drilling work, the project has grown from six main veins spanning eight kilometres to eight main veins spanning 11 kilometres of total length.

Daniel, does that pretty much sum up what has been accomplished so far at Capolito?

DR: Yes, that’s a great summary.

The Zamora Project is Mercado Minerals’ second major exploration asset. It presents a district-scale opportunity covering approximately 3,000 hectares in Sinaloa, Mexico, right in the heart of the prolific western silver belt. The project currently holds 14 known high-grade silver and gold vein targets and has several historic small-scale underground mines.

Crucially, the Zamora, the entire system, has never been drill tested.

Mercado Minerals has now officially kicked off its first boots-on-the-ground exploration on the project, shifting from legal preparations to active field exploration. The team is focused on three main phases of work.

Through its subsidiary, the company signed a community access and exploration deal with the local Ejido Rincon de Ibonia. This clears a key social and regulatory hurdle for advancing drill permitting in the Campanillas area. Field crews are currently setting up localized infrastructure, building out an operational camp, and coordinating regional logistics to support continuous field operation.

The company has already initiated its first mapping and surface chip sampling campaign targeting the Campanillas vein. Mapping across a 300-meter surface length they found the mineralized zone is wider than older historical data has indicated.

The very first surface results from the ongoing reconnaissance program have proven highly successful, hitting ultra-high grades of silver on surface.

The company plans to complete the reinstatement of all remaining concessions, which we will dive into shortly, finish mapping the other 13 vein locations, and advance the regulatory permitting required to bring a second drill rig to Zamora for its first-ever drill program.

Does that pretty much sum up what you’ve accomplished on Zamora so far?

DR: It does.

RM: Let’s compare the two projects, Zamora and Capolito, because they both share a similar foundation as both projects are classified low- sulfidation epithermal systems.

Both are located in the Sierra Madre Occidental, a vast mountain region in Mexico that is world-famous for its massive silver and gold deposits.

As similar as the foundations are they both represent different chapters of the same story, whereas Capolito is a well-mapped, tightly-packed network of veins, and Zamora is a massive, widely-spaced target area that has barely been explored.

Do you agree with that?

DR: Yes, both have their similarities and their differences, but I’d say the differences are their uniqueness as well.

RM: The metal content?

DR: Yes, mostly in the high-grade nature of the surface silver and gold that we’re seeing at Zamora. Capalito has gold and silver but also a broader base metal kick, so far.

We see at the Capolito Project that the El Agua vein has given us larger base metal credits, but at one of the other main veins at Capolito, El Pilar, there is higher gold, but still has silver, lead, and zinc in more elevated numbers than Zamora as a whole. So currently Zamora seems to be more gold-silver focused.

Yes, Zamora has 14 artisanal mines and adits on the property but we are focusing only on the areas that we currently have and know that we can advance. And that is mostly in the Campanillas area.

RM: Capolito has had 25 holes completed, whereas Zamora is at a much earlier stage. It has never been drill-tested.

DR: That’s the thing, Zamora has never been drill-tested. I was on the property last week and the takeaway from my visit was we still don’t know why this has never been drilled.

RM: You are going to do a Phase 2 program back at Capolito.

RM: We have a plan of what we want to do there. We set out to prove there’s still plenty of meat left on the bone. We did that, and now we have to continue working on it.

We uncovered the Renata vein, which has never been drilled and that’s over a kilometer strike length.

We drilled into the offset of Cinco Senoras and the results were not stellar, but there’s further follow-up to be done there.

There’s also Pilar Sur to drill, and then we have to continue drilling on the known areas that we already have drilled that still remain open and still remain open along strikes and that depth. There’s a lot of areas where we have to continue advancing the project.

RM: Tell us a little more about the Renata, it is a new discovery.

DR: There were one or two historic samples that attracted us to that area. With the use of LIDAR, high-resolution airborne magnetics and ground mapping we were able to connect the dots.

Lo and behold, all of a sudden there’s a vein that we see running for over 1,100 meters and ranging in thickness from an average width of 1.9 meters up to 5 meters. We’re getting results of up to 233 grams per tonne silver and half a gram per tonne gold.

There’s still two unexplained soil anomalies from our soil sampling program that we need to go follow up on.

RM: There’s only so much you can do in one year. When do you think you can get back on the ground, Daniel?

DR: It’s the rainy season now it’ll come to an end in roughly two months. It doesn’t mean everything has to come to a hard stop, but as far as future drilling, we’ll call drilling at Copalito 2027 business.

RM: It does appear to me that Zamora is cleaner, being more precious metals orientated.

We only have limited surface sampling so don’t know what’s deeper,

But there doesn’t seem to have the same heavy footprint of industrial-based metals found at Copalito. Your early chip samples show very high raw silver numbers, up to 828 grams a tonne, and there’s good gold.

Sulfidation epithermal systems have differing zones of mineralization, you can be in one of them from surface and as you go deeper the metal content could change.

DR: Yes, but it’s too early to say where we are at Zamora, as we haven’t been able to drill yet. Once we start drilling we’ll get a better understanding of where we’re in the system and can start dissecting the rocks to get a better understanding of what’s happening and where we’re at.

RM: We’ve got an exploration deal with the landowners, we’re allowed to go in and do work, even drilling on our good standing area but not the other area of the project not in good standing.

Could you explain the process of moving to good standing and a timeline on that and who else we need to get agreements from to work on the other area’s?

DR: We have an agreement with the Ejido Rincon de Ibonia and we’re in the process of talking to several different communities in the region.

These agreements are foundational for advancing the project and enabling us advance to permitting and drilling.

We currently have 378 hectares, and we’re working on getting the other 2,922 hectares back into good standing.

The claims, because of years of non-paid back taxes and administrative non-filing are considered in ‘canceled status’, but the cancellation is not 100%.

Administratively, we should be able to go in and reverse those concessions back into good standing and uncanceled, and we’re seeing several other projects doing this successfully.

A number of different other projects that have had their status reversed, and they’re in good standing again so that gives a strong confidence level. I’ll say a six-month window so it’s turning into 2027 business to have the rest of the claims in good standing.

The results we see in the vein potential and the high-grade nature of the property convinces me to wait. It is an administrative process that we’re waiting to work through, and it is in process currently.

RM: Is there a problem talking about it, or are we first in line as the first mover?

DR: We own the concessions, they might be currently canceled but we own them. The title is held under Concordia Silver Company S.A. de C.V., a 100% owned subsidiary of Mercado. The concessions are held and on title as ours so it doesn’t go to auction, it doesn’t go to a bid.

RM: Daniel, you and your team are very well-suited to be in Mexico. Can you tell us more about that, please?

DR: The foundation of our company is built on a team in Mexico that comes with a lot of great relationships and excellent access.

We have an extraordinary level of community engagement.

RM: When you’re talking to the people in the communities, what is their biggest concern?

DR: Our conversations always start with we’re here to grow, as we grow, you grow, we’re going to grow together and reap the benefits together. As we grow, we help grow the community around us and together build a better environment for everybody.

It’s about being responsible and trustworthy friends.

RM: Mercado, as a company, has a strategic company backer. It’s a well-known company that you’re very familiar with. Tell us who it is, a little bit about that relationship and how important it is.

DR: We announced Vizsla Silver TSX:VZLA as a strategic partner in November of last year. The importance of the key word there is that they’re strategic. They’re there to help us grow in Mexico, in Sinaloa.

Their background and resources and their accomplishments to date speak for themselves. Going from discovery to development to, I’m assuming mining in the next couple of years, is something that I’d love to follow. To have them as support and as a strategic investor is great to have.

RM: At the end of July Mercado’s share price was a lowly $0.075 cents. Today, it’s trading at $0.16. You’re always doing investor outreach, could you tell us about your future efforts now that summer is over?

DR: We have never stopped communicating with shareholders, the goal being to keep everybody up to date.

We’re constantly moving both projects forward and trying hard to keep everybody up to date.

I’ve got interviews and communication with you and I’m going to be on the road. First I’ll be at Beaver Creek in Colorado, than the Metals Investors Forum next week in Vancouver, will be doing presentations there. I’ve some investor rounds in New York and I’ll be at the New Orleans conference.

RM: Why would somebody consider an investment into Mercado right now, Daniel?

DR: We set out to prove something at Capalito and I think we did that in our first drill program. We’re building and working on what a phase two looks out there. We are very much looking forward to getting that plan out to the market and getting back on the ground there.

We’re on Zamora, we’re working on it and going to grow it.

We’ve also have strategic investors in Vizsla Silver, who want us to be as successful as we want.

We’ve got the right team. We still have cash in the bank and we’re motivated to move forward.

We are still a good value proposition and there’s a lot of good ingredients here to create much more value.

RM: Have a great day and thanks Daniel.

DR: Thanks Rick, talk later.

Richard (Rick) Mills
aheadoftheherd.com

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Richard owns shares of Mercado Minerals (CSE:MERC). MERC is a paid advertiser on his site aheadoftheherd.com This article is issued on behalf of MERC