Hot Chili has dished up a bumper-grade 144m intercept at 1 per cent copper-equivalent as it looks to grow the resource at the Cortadera deposit at its broader Costa Fuego copper hub in northern Chile. The company is eyeing a pre-feasibility study to fast-track Costa Fuego to production with the high-grade core at Cortadera to play a key part.
ASX-listed Hot Chili has a massive global resource already on the table for Costa Fuego - 2.9 million tonnes of copper and 2.7 million ounces of gold at the Cortadera and Productora deposits 14km apart.
The company commenced an aggressive 40,000m drilling campaign at Cortadera in January with three rigs working overtime to deliver a major resource upgrade later this year.
Cortadera hosts a whopping 451Mt resource at 0.46 per cent copper-equivalent across three porphyry zones over 2.3km of drilling strike. The three zones, Cuerpo 1, 2 and 3, remain open at depth and Hot Chili appears to have nailed the high-grade core of the largest zone, Cuerpo 3, with its latest drilling.
A 62m wide zone grading 1 per cent copper and 0.4 grams per tonne gold represents one of the highest-grade intervals reported at Cortadera. The zone forms part of the 144m interval at 1 per cent copper-equivalent, within a broader 410m going at 0.6 per cent copper-equivalent from 440m.
The new hit is similar to the high-grade discovery hole at Cortadera 300m away. A 100m interval at 1 per cent copper and 0.5g/t gold was returned within a broader 750m grading 0.7 per cent copper-equivalent from 204m in that 2019 discovery hole.
Another new intercept at Cuerpo 3 hit 218m grading 0.6 per cent copper-equivalent from 720m, including 24m grading 0.8 per cent.
Hot Chili is looking to launch a pre-feasibility study, or “PFS” on Costa Fuego with a focus on combining Cortadera and the producing Productora operation.
Cuerpo 3 will be pivotal in PFS modelling and calculations due to its high-grade inventory of 56.6Mt grading 0.97 per cent copper-equivalent. Hot Chili expects Cuerpo 3 to grow significantly as it continues to pepper the deposit with drilling.
Hot Chili Managing Director, Christian Easterday said: “It is an exciting time for our company ahead of our pre-feasibility and resource upgrade. Cortadera continues to deliver exceptional widths of copper and gold, with the new result recording some 62m grading 1.0 per cent copper and 0.4g/t gold, much higher grade than we had estimated in that area of the main porphyry.”
Mr Easterday said a combined Costa Fuego copper project was “set to deliver on both scale and grade at a time of increasing copper price and limited large-scale new copper supply opportunities in top-tier mining jurisdictions”.
Hot Chili appears to have gained another boost at Cortadera with the discovery of a new porphyry zone between the Cuerpo 1 and Cuerpo 2 zones, located along strike to the north-west from Cuerpo 3.
The first hole into the new zone returned 56m at 0.4 per cent copper from 40m and confirmed that Cuerpo 1, Cuerpo 2 and Cuerpo 3 are connected over 2.3km of strike. Depth-testing of the new zone is now planned.
The rods continue to turn at Cortadera with assay results from 23 holes for around 5,900m pending.
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By Matt Birney
