- Hot Chili (HCH) soars as it reports another high-grade zone of copper mineralisation at its Cortadera project in Chile
- The latest hit is the second-best interval at Cortadera so far, according to HCH management
- The result comes as Hot Chili works to complete a feasibility study for the Cortadera discovery and pursue a potential dual-listing on the Canadian market
- Hot Chili’s recent drilling also connects two key porphyry discoveries in the project area for over 2.3 kilometres of strike length
- Shares in Hot Chili are up 13.89 per cent and trading at 4.1 cents each at 1:54 pm AEST
Copper explorer Hot Chili (HCH) is spiking on the ASX today after reporting another high-grade zone of copper mineralisation at its Cortadera project in Chile.
The latest hit, which HCH said was the second-best interval at Cortadera so far, comes as the company works to complete a feasibility study for the porphyry discovery and progress a dual-listing on the Canadian share market.
Cortadera is part of the wider Costa Fuego project along the coast of Chile, around 600 kilometres north of the capital of Santiago.
The latest results include a broad 410-metre intersection grading 0.6 per cent copper equivalent (CuEq) from 440 metres to 850 metres downhole. The last 144 metres of this intersection — between 706 metres and 850 metres — graded 1.0 per cent CuEq.
What’s more, assays for the rest of the hole, which was drilled to 1434 metres, are still pending.
Hot Chili Managing Director Christian Easterday said the new drill results returned a “much higher grade” than the company was expecting from this part of the project.
“Our combined Costa Fuego copper project is 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,” Mr Easterday said.
“We are now poised to commence our pre-feasibility study into the largest copper development of any ASX-listed emerging company since Equinox Minerals advanced its Lumwana copper project to production over ten years ago.”
He reminded investors that Equinox Minerals was bought out by Barrick Gold in 2011 for a cool $7.1 billion.
Connected porphyries
While the high-grade result came from the Cuerpo 3 porphyry in the wider Cortadera project area, Hot Chili also reported some important results from drilling between Cuerpo 1 and Cuerpo 2.
The company said it struck a new 500-metre-long porphyry zone between the two locations, which connects the two porphyry discoveries.
According to HCH, this means all of its porphyry centres are connected over 2.3 kilometres of strike length.
HCH said it was operating five shifts of drilling per day with three separate drill rigs at Cortadera.
Assay results are currently pending for 23 holes which, together, make up around 5900 metres of drilling.
Shares in Hot Chili were up 13.89 per cent and trading at 4.1 cents each at 1:54 pm AEST.