High Grade Core Continues To Expand Copper Discovery
Hot Chili Limited (ASX:HCH) has commenced a 40,000m drilling programme at the Cortadera copper-gold porphyry discovery, part of the company’s Costa Fuego coastal range copper development in Chile.
The company’s fully funded 2021 work programme aims to continue building Costa Fuego toward a tier one copper project (+5Mt copper) from its current contained metal resource base of 2.9Mt copper and 2.7Moz gold.
Drilling has been significantly accelerated from last year with two drill rigs currently in operation and a third rig expected to commence shortly in February.
New results from drilling designed to expand the main high-grade core at Cortadera have returned another set of strong intersections.
A primary focus for the company in 2021 is to expand the high grade core (defined as >0.6% CuEq), currently sitting at 104Mt at 0.74% CuEq, within Cortadera’s 451Mt Mineral Resource.
Diamond drill hole CRP0052D returned a higher-grade intersection of 80m grading 0.6% copper and 0.2g/t gold within a broader zone of 382m grading 0.4% copper and 0.1g/t gold from 524m down-hole depth along the south-eastern extent of the high-grade core to the main porphyry (Cuerpo 3).
In addition, the company has recorded an exceptionally wide 750m interval of porphyry mineralisation from a down-hole depth of 250m in diamond drill hole CRP0046D. The hole is currently at 1,000m in porphyry mineralisation and is planned to extend to 1,200m at this stage.
Importantly, within the wide 750m visual interval of mineralisation, two zones of strongly mineralised porphyry have been recorded:
- 100m wide zone between 250m and 350m depth down-hole, and
- 170m wide zone between 550m and 720m depth down-hole
Both zones of strongly mineralised porphyry comprise visual estimates of 1.0% – 2.5% chalcopyrite contained as fine dissemination and in association with 2% to 15% B-vein abundance. Visual estimates of sulphide minerals are not an accurate representation of expected assay value and are provided for indicative purposes only.
Importantly, the results provide confidence for further growth in predictive extensional areas where the high-grade core is absent from Cortadera’s maiden resource owing to low or no drilling density.
The company commenced a major drilling campaign at Cortadera recently, initially utilising two drill rigs with a third drill rig set to arrive in February.
Each drill rig will focus on key growth areas within the Cortadera discovery window as well as other large satellite growth opportunities.
