Hot Chili closes in on Cortadera copper-gold project acquisition

Chile-focused copper and gold explorer Hot Chili is near to finalising its acquisition of the world-class Cortadera project ahead of schedule.

A $US10m ($13m) payment has been made by Hot Chili (ASX:HCH) to private Chilean mining group SCM Carola, and its payments to date cover more than half the $US32m purchase price for Cortadera.

Since its deal to acquire Cortadera in 2019, Hot Chili has paid $US17m to SCM Carola, and the ASX company has only one remaining payment to make of $US15 by mid-July 2022.

“Coming off the back of our first resource of 1.7 million tonnes of copper metal and 1.9 million ounces of gold, announced in October 2020, Cortadera now represents one of the lowest cost recent acquisitions in the copper sector,” managing director, Christian Easterday, said.

“This equates to less than 1 cent per pound of copper added in resource against the total purchase price of $US32m and is set to further reduce with additional resource growth this year,” he said.

The Cortadera project is located 600km north of Chile’s capital Santiago, and also has a resource of 9.9 million ounces of silver.

Hot Chili paid SCM Carola an early instalment of $US10m to SCM Carola before its mid-July deadline.

Further drilling for Cortadera resource

The company is accelerating its development activities for Cortadera which involve a 40,000m drilling program and scoping studies to include the project as a centrepiece of its large-scale Costa Fuego copper development.

Hot Chili has recently discovered a second high-grade core at Cortadera and has found a large surface anomaly for molybdenum.

“In less than two years, we have transformed Cortadera from a relatively small, privately-held discovery in Chile to a leading global copper resource,” said Easterday.

The company is expecting to make further updates on multiple work streams across its Costa Fuego mega-project in the near future.