Special Report: Hot Chili is now three for three at its Cortadera copper-gold porphyry discovery in Chile after recording a new record drill result.
The company’s second deep diamond hole in its fully funded Phase Two drilling program returned an extremely broad intersection of 596m at 0.5 per cent copper and 0.2 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 328m.
Hot Chili (ASX:HCH) added that this included a higher grade zone at 0.7 per cent copper and 0.3g/t gold from 430m that also contains significant levels of silver and molybdenum.
This follows up on September’s 848m intersection grading 0.4 per cent copper and 0.2g/t gold, just 112m from surface and the initial hit of 750m at 0.6 per cent copper and 0.2g/t gold in July, which ranks as one of the world’s best copper-gold porphyry drill results ever recorded.
Given that most of the major copper mines are porphyries, which can be economic from copper concentrations as low as 0.15 per cent, the results that Hot Chili have returned from its drilling to date has drawn considerable attention.
And there is more coming. A third drill hole in the program has recorded a broad intersection of shallow mineralised porphyry from a depth of 50m to 330m, followed by strongly mineralised porphyry from 494m to 622m depth with assays expected shortly.
A fourth hole is currently at a depth of 434m with mineralised porphyry being intersected from 120m to 250m depth.
Drilling at the main Cuerpo 3 porphyry at Cortadera will continue for the coming month before Hot Chili starts step-out drilling to extend mineralisation at all four porphyries within the project.
The company has also made its first $US3m payment to SCM Carola towards the acquisition of the Cortadera project.
This follows on the initial $US5m payment and allows the company to expand its drilling program during the remaining two-year option term.
A Tier 1 copper development
Hot Chili wants to build a copper hub by combining the advanced Productora project with Cortadera; this looks likely to underpin a globally significant new copper development along the coastline of Chile.
Cortadera is an early stage analogue to SolGold’s massive Cascabel project in Ecuador, which hosts 10.8 million tonnes of contained copper metal, 20 million ounces of gold, and is still growing.
However, there are significant differences between the two projects.
While Cascabel requires costly block cave underground mining because its ore body starts from around 600m deep, Cortadera is relatively shallow and may be amendable to far less capital-intensive open pit mining.
Read more: Capital raise demand Hot as a Chili after record drill results