Hot Chili gets a whole lotta love after visual copper intercepts at Valentina

Copper-gold prospectivity at Hot Chili’s Costa Fuego hub is not limited to its Cortadera and Productora projects as highlighted by strong visual copper from drilling at the Valentina deposit.

Diamond hole VALMET-002 recorded a 17m intersection of “interesting” copper mineralisation from a depth of 22m including 8m of “very interesting” mineralisation such as chalcocite, cuprite and covellite, which are all high-grade copper ore minerals by molecular weight.

Importantly for Hot Chili (ASX:HCH), the intersected zone is located about 120m south of existing underground mine workings at Valentina, which effectively extends the high-grade copper zone at the project by the same amount.

While visual observations are purely indicative and in no way a replacement for laboratory assays, they do provide a good idea of whether mineralisation has been intersected.

More to come

Two rigs are currently operating at the Valentina and San Antonio copper deposits about 5km east of the company’s outstanding Cortadera copper porphyry discovery.

10 holes have been completed to date at Valentina with a further eight holes planned, and assays from VALMET-002 are expected to be released in the coming weeks.

Once drilling at the two deposits is completed, further drilling is planned to test several large growth targets including Santiago Z and extensional porphyry targets along strike from Cortadera.

Hot Chili has also extended pre-feasibility studies to capture additional metallurgical test work opportunities across all deposits at Costa Fuego and preliminary mine planning is being extended to allow the incorporation of new resource growth from drilling in 2022.

Costa Fuego currently has a massive Indicated resource of 725 million tonnes grading 0.47% copper equivalent, or contained resources totalling 2.8Mt of copper, 2.6 million ounces of gold, 10.5Moz of silver and 67,000t of molybdenum.

Other updates include imminent results on ongoing port negotiations and final development study drill results from Cortadera and Productora once all results have been received.

This article was developed in collaboration with Hot Chili, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.