New drill results continue to increase the size — and grade – of Hot Chili’s (ASX:HCH) monster Cortadera copper-gold discovery in Chile.
Hot Chili is building towards a globally significant, tier 1 +5Mt copper resource.
Extensional drilling at Cortadera – designed to make it bigger — is on-track to deliver a significant upgrade to the explorer’s combined Costa Fuego resource, which sits at 724 million tonnes (Mt) grading 0.48% CuEq for 2.9Mt copper, 2.7Moz gold, 9.9Moz silver and 64,000t molybdenum.
The company now has eight significant extensional diamond drill intersections since Cortadera’s maiden resource was announced in October last year.
Latest results within Cortadera’s main porphyry (Cuerpo 3) include 114m at 0.5% copper and 0.2g/t gold from 248m and 185m grading 0.5% copper & 0.2g/t gold from 568m.
Importantly, these two higher grade intersections were recorded in areas previously modelled as low grade within Cuerpo 3.
Further wide, visual intersections of porphyry mineralisation up to 550m long have been recorded in two more drillholes. Assays are pending.
Porphyry drilling blitz
Two diamond drill rigs are operating on a 24-hr basis to complete a large resource expansion drill programme across Cortadera this year.
A total of eight first-pass RC drill holes have also been completed across the large ‘Cortadera North’ target, 2km north of Cortadera.
An additional three RC drill holes remain to be drilled and Hot Chili expects to report results once all assays have been received and compiled.
In addition, several shallow significant copper gold hits were recorded from initial RC drill holes across Cuerpo 1, including 36m at 0.4% copper and 0.1g/t gold from surface (including 10m grading 0.7% copper and 0.2g/t gold from 24m).
Further RC drilling is planned to extend areas of shallow higher grade copper and gold at Cuerpo 1.
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.