Now Holds Over 130,000 Hectares In Brazil
Aguia Resources Limited (ASX: AGR) has successfully staked additional strategic land positions within the Rio Grande Copper Belt in Rio Grande do Sul (RS), the southernmost state of Brazil.
Managing Director, Dr Fernando Tallarico, said the significant and strategic increase in Aguia’s land holding in the Rio Grande Copper Belt is designed to cover additional copper occurrences, resulting in an additional 15 new exploration tenements covering 28,343.80 hectares. These new areas will be subject to geological mapping and initial scouting to select future targets.
These new claims total ~28,343 hectares and cover numerous historical copper occurrences which are within proximity to the company’s existing copper exploration targets. Aguia’s total land position in the highly prospective belt is now over 130,000 hectares.
“Expanding our copper leases in RS is an ongoing focus for our team as we continue to identify and secure the most prospective targets across the Rio Grande Copper Belt,” Dr Tallarico said.
“With over 130,000 hectares of leases, we have a very dominant position in the region which gives us a major strategic advantage.
“Whilst our immediate focus is bringing the Tres Estradas Phosphate Project into production, and this is progressing well, unlocking the value of our copper assets is also a priority for the Board.”
The State of Rio Grande do Sul is host to one of the first copper mines in Brazil, the Camaqua Mine, from where 30 million tons of copper ore were mined. In addition to this historical mine, the Brazilian Geological Survey (CPRM) has reported as many as 110 copper occurrences in the Rio Grande Belt. Most of these occurrences have not yet been subjected to systematic modern exploration programs.
This geological environment is also the host of many base metal and gold projects, such as the Caçapava Project owned by Nexa Resources in a joint venture with IamGold, with mineral resources of 26Mt @ 1.05% zinc and 1.95% lead, and the Amarillo Gold project located on the outskirts of the city of Lavras do Sul, containing a resource of 523,000 ounces of gold. Currently, other copper, gold, and base metals exploration projects are progressing within the belt.
Aguia’s Copper Assets
The most advanced copper project in the Aguia’s portfolio is the Andrade Copper Project. The company recently announced an upgrade in the mineral resources at Andrade, with an Indicated Resource of 18Mt grading 0.41% copper and a further 4Mt of Inferred Resource grading 0.53% copper.
An initial scoping study of the deposit that was completed and released on 9 March 2021 demonstrated positive economic results. This study investigated the production of metallic copper (copper cathode) to be shipped to the Port of Rio Grande, located 260km to the southeast of the project site.
In addition to Andrade, Aguia is also progressing work on seven other copper exploration targets that have been subjected to systematic geological mapping, rock and soil geochemistry, trenching and channel sampling, and ground geophysics.
Among these regional targets, Carlota is the most advanced target as it has a copper and gold-in-soils anomaly that is underlined by a shallow ground geophysics anomaly and is ready to be drill tested.
