The hot seat: Hot Chili lands mining and capital markets veteran as new chair

Hot Chili enters a new growth-phase with experienced mining and global capital markets leader Dr Nicole Adshead-Bell accepting an offer as the board’s new chair.

Dr Adshead-Bell, who joined the company as a non-executive director in January, will replace Murray Black following his retirement on 1 March.

She is an executive and a geologist with over 25 years of experience bridging the gap between the technical, corporate, institutional investor and investment banking segments of the business – within an ESG framework.

Besides her new role with Hot Chili (ASX:HCH), Dr Nicole Adshead-Bell is currently a non-executive with Canada’s Altius Minerals and fellow Australian Matador Mining (ASX:MZZ).

No stranger to the hot seat, she was previously the managing director and chief executive officer of Beadell Resources prior to its acquisition by Great Panther Mining.

Dr Adshead-Bell’s experience with funds and investment dealers during her time as director of mining research at Sun Valley Gold, Haywood Securities’ managing director of investment banking, and Dundee Securities’ mining analyst – covering copper, zinc and uranium – will also serve the company as it moves towards developing its Costa Fuego copper-gold project in Chile.

This is demonstrated during her time at Haywood, where she was involved in approximately 20 public transactions including streaming, mergers, acquisitions and divestitures and raising approximately C$1.8bn in equity/convertible debenture financings.

More recently, Dr Adshead-Bell established Cupel Advisory Corp. to provide clients with focus across investments and advisory services in the mining sector.

Dr Adshead-Bell is the new Black

Hot Chili founder Murray Black, who’s also been the company’s chair since its inception in 2008, welcomed Adshead-Bell’s appointment.

“I am pleased the board has appointed Nicole as my successor. Her combination of mining and capital markets expertise is the right mix to grow the company going forward,” he noted.

Dr Adshead-Bell says Hot Chili is well positioned to contribute to the de-carbonisation super cycle given the lack of significant new copper discoveries combined with a lack of near-term material copper development projects.

“I firmly believe Hot Chili will appeal to a broad range of investors as it leverages off its recent Canadian listing,” she explained.

“Particularly as there are few companies with Hot Chili’s combination of commodity mix, project size, project quality, low economic hurdle, location and fit for purpose leadership team.”

Big copper resource

Hot Chili’s Costa Fuego project currently has a resource of 724 million tonnes grading 0.48% copper equivalent resource with the exciting Cortadera discovery accounting for the lion’s share of this at 451Mt at 0.46% copper equivalent.

This is widely considered to be due for further upgrades given the recent confirmation of a new higher-grade core at the main Cuerpo 3 porphyry and ongoing success of drilling – some 52,000m drilled since the Cortadera maiden resource was delivered in October 2020.

Modelling has supported this belief with signs that all the three porphyries at Cortadera are linked with potential for both open pit and underground mining options.

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.