Hot Chili chases copper-gold monsters in Chilean copper homeland

Hot Chili has fired up the diamond drill rigs at its emerging La Verde copper-gold porphyry discovery in Chile’s Atacama region, as copper prices swell and exploration heats up in the heartland of copper production.

Sitting just 30 kilometres south of the company’s planned Costa Fuego copper-gold processing plant, La Verde is shaping up as a hefty addition to Hot Chili’s Chilean portfolio.

A diamond drill rig working at Hot Chili’s La Verde copper-gold discovery in Chile’s Atacama region.

It already has a diamond rig churning away on double shifts at the recent discovery, chasing deeper high-grade zones after a cracking copper-gold result from its first-pass reverse circulation program last December.

The earlier effort mapped out a 1000-metre by 750m footprint with copper grades well above 0.2 per cent, stretching more than 400m deep.

Over half the reverse circulation holes hit their depth limit still in mineralisation, leaving the system wide open for more.

Three higher-grade pockets were confirmed near-surface in May, as the phase two drilling zeroed in on the project’s depth potential.

Hot Chili intends to also test lateral extensions and nearby look-alike targets that could beef up further finds at the project.

The company reckons its second-string La Verde porphyry discovery could add serious open-pit material to its flagship Costa Fuego copper-gold project’s 20-year mine plan, boosting its Chile lifespan and economics beyond the mouthwatering March pre-feasibility study’s numbers.

That study already pegs Costa Fuego as a monster, with a 798-million-tonne resource grading 0.45 per cent copper equivalent, packing 2.9Mt of copper, 2.6 million ounces of gold and 12.9 million ounces of silver.

Conceptual open-pit shells at La Verde hint at a decent chunk of ore to feed Costa Fuego’s hub. The conceptual shells are in their early days – and include exploration targets only per compliance rules - but the setup mirrors the porphyry-style nailed at Costa Fuego’s Cortadera and Productora deposits.

The drilling is part of a broader resource push, which couldn’t come at a better time. While gold prices stay white-hot, copper is having another price run after the world’s second-largest copper mine, Grasberg in Indonesia, experienced a catastrophic mudslide, in which 800,000t of “wet material” slid into the mine. Two workers were killed and five are missing.

Copper supply is tight these days and, with the constant electrification push, it’s bound to gain more momentum.

Hot Chili is keeping the market posted on results as they roll in. As La Verde’s drills spin and Costa Fuego’s plans hum, the company looks ready to keep the motor revving on its Chile copper belt production story.

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