Special Report: Hot Chili’s latest hole has pushed out the northern edge of its Cuerpo 3 porphyry by a further 70m with another eye-watering copper-gold intersection.

Hot Chili’s (ASX:HCH) Cortadera copper-gold porphyry discovery was already showing all the signs of being a truly impressive find with multiple broad intersections of mineralisation including a massive 972m grading 0.5 per cent copper and 0.2 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from surface.

And now the company has kicked off the new year with its first extension drill hole confirming a 70m extension along the northern contact of Cuerpo 3, the largest porphyry discovered to date at the Cortadera project in Chile.

This hole – the first of eight deep diamond holes that seek to expand the size of the discovery – returned an intersection of 649m at 0.4 per cent copper and 0.1g/t gold from a depth of 330m.

It ends in mineralised porphyry and includes a higher grade zone of 440m at 0.5 per cent copper and 0.2g/t gold with silver and molybdenum credits.

The result points to the continued growth of the Cortadera discovery given that the northern contact of Cuerpo 3 is about 200m wide and still remains open.

Hot Chili plans to release a large initial resource estimate for Cortadera within the first half of 2020.

It kicked off its 2020 operations a fortnight ago with the start of platform and access clearing activities after securing regulatory approval to construct a further 39 drill platforms.

The company has two rigs poised to start drilling, focusing on expanding the existing Cortadera discovery by drilling across the Cuerpo 3 and Cuerpo 2 porphyries and testing two large growth targets adjacent to Cortadera.

The latter goal includes the Cuerpo 3 North target about 500m north of Cuerpo 3 and completing first pass scout drilling across the 1.5km-long Cortadera North target about 2km north of Cortadera.

Originally acquired as a bulk tonnage, open pit mine to complement the company’s planned production hub development, centred around the nearby Productora copper project, Cortadera is shaping up as a tier-1 copper-gold discovery in its own right.

The wide porphyry intersections compare favourably with drill intersections from Solgold’s tier 1 Cascabel project in Ecuador, which has a global resource of 5.2 million tonnes of copper and 12.3 million ounces of gold.

>> Now watch: 90 Seconds With… Christian Easterday, Hot Chili

 

 

This story was developed in collaboration with Hot Chili, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.
This story does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.

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