Chunks of native copper (or rocks painted to look like copper) lurking in the dark.
Source: Adobe Stock
The Market Online - At The Bell

Join our daily newsletter At The Bell to receive exclusive market insights

AusQuest (ASX:AQD) is set to kick off a new drilling program at the Cerro de Fierro Copper-Gold project in southern Peru by the end of the month – which will involve drilling three holes, totalling around 800 metres.

The program is hoped to investigate a recently identified copper target near a previously drilled area.

In fact, a review of past drilling data revealed an important area that hasn’t been tested for structurally controlled mineralisation. This has become the focus of the new drilling effort.

This particular new target is located close to a drill hole which had intersected multiple zones of copper-gold mineralisation – and some previous results had indeed show 30 metres at 0.43% copper and 0.16 grams per tonne (g/t) of gold, 43 metres at 0.43% copper and 0.35 g/t of gold, 28 metres at 0.42% copper and 0.15 g/t of gold, and 33 metres at 0.24% copper and 0.13 g/t of gold.

One important factor to note is that the Cerro de Fierro project is situated at the southern end of a known iron oxide copper-gold (IOCG) metallogenic belt in southern Peru. It is about 150 kilometres from the Mina Justa deposit, which contains approximately 337 million tonnes at 0.76% copper and is being developed by the Marcobre Joint Venture.

“We believe these are excellent potential to find extensions to the copper and gold
mineralisation intersected by earlier drilling, now that we have a much better understanding of the controls on the mineralisation,” AusQuest’s Managing Director, Graeme Drew said.

AQD has been trading at 1.4 cents.

More From The Market Online

‘Success’: Eastern Metals enjoys +200% unpause pop after closing out pivotal Raptor acquisition

Eastern Metals − now seeing out its final days under that name − has boomed +200%…
Logo of Rio Tinto on a building in Montreal

Back to the table: Glencore-Rio Tinto restart talks to create world’s largest mining company

Glencore and Rio Tinto have returned to the deal room early in CY26, holding "preliminary discussions"…
The words "Market Open ASX 200 Futures Tip RISE" appear stacked atop one another next to ASX company iconography.

ASX Market Open: Stokes brewing up new BlueScope bid, Glencore-Rio merger convo restarts | Jan 9

ASX today – Friday is looking like an M&A day, with Stokes' conglomerate preparing another BlueScope…
Market Close Graphic

Market Close: Boring day really as 8700pts mark remains the quo; gold retreat hits materials

Welcome to the end of the Thursday session, today’s Market Close will be article-only, but keep an eye on the homepage for the