ASX-listed Hot Chili may be onto another significant discovery – at the Cortadera North target zone – which could even be a twin to its Cortadera copper-gold porphyry system. The potential for a new “look-alike” discovery about 2km north of Cortadera, which shows a geochemical footprint of about 2km in length, comes just weeks ahead of the company’s plans to announce a maiden resource estimate for the Chilean project.
The Perth-based company currently has the drill bit firing at the copper-gold project hunting down a possible additional high-grade core, this time below the Cuerpo 2 deposit, and the potential for a major extension to the main Cuerpo 3 porphyry.
Once that campaign has been exhausted with the completion of multiple pre-collars, Hot Chili’s RC drilling caravan will roll on to the Cortadera North prospect, drawn by the lure of a 2km geochemical footprint of mineralisation.
Diamond drilling is scheduled to return to double shifts in the coming fortnight, with the first of three planned diamond holes underway across the Cuerpo 3 North target, located about 500m north of the main porphyry at Cortadera.
Adding to the hive of activity, infill mapping and soil geochemical surveys across the Cortadera North target zone have been undertaken in the lead-up to the first-pass drill testing there.
According to the company, the surface reconnaissance work has provided further encouragement across the 2km-long target zone, identifying multiple areas of outcropping copper oxides and copper-bearing, porphyry veins.
In the meantime, Hot Chili says the process of securing assay certification for historical diamond drill holes after retrieving the historical data from laboratories in Chile has pushed out the anticipated time frame for the release of the Cortadera maiden resource.
However, Hot Chili points out the cataloguing and assessment of historical drill assays, which is now complete, will ultimately culminate in a more robust resource estimation utilising all historical diamond drilling.
Perth-based broking firm Argonaut previously estimated Cortadera has the potential to host a 500-million-tonne resource grading about 0.65 per cent copper equivalent, with a higher-grade core of up to 100Mt at about 1.0 per cent copper equivalent.
The broker says the Cortadera North target “offers potential to significantly increase the scale of mineralisation at the project”.
All eyes will be on Hot Chili’s drilling updates and its maiden Cortadera resource estimate.
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By Matt Birney
