Company 1 Hot Chili Name (ASX: HCH) Limited (ASX: XXX)
Hot Chili has made great progress during the early stages of 2021, in particular by moving to the final stage of the company’s 100 per cent acquisition of the world-class Cortadera copper-gold discovery in Chile. In February, Hot Chili paid an instalment of US$10 million towards the acquisition of Cortadera from private Chilean mining group SCM Carola, bringing total payments by Hot Chili to US$17 million since the deal to acquire Cortadera was announced in February 2019. Hot Chili now has only one remaining payment of US$15 million due in mid-July 2022. By making the latest payment earlier than required, Hot Chili fashioned 18 months of breathing space for it to focus on the growth of Cortadera’s maiden resource before the final acquisition payment is due. The company has accelerated activities that kicked off with a fully funded 40,000m drill program and scoping studies designed to incorporate Cortadera as the centre piece of Hot Chili’s combined large-scale Cost Fuego copper development. “In less than two years we have transformed Cortadera from a small privately-held discovery in Chile to a leading global copper resource,” Hot Chili managing director Christian Easterday said “Coming off the back of our first resource of 1.7 million tonnes copper metal and 1.9 million ounces of gold, announced in October 2020, Cortadera now represents one of the lowest cost recent acquisitions in the copper sector. “This equates to less than US 1 cent per pound of copper added in resource against the total purchase price of US$32 million and is set to further reduce with additional resource growth this year.” To demonstrate just how good the potential at Cortadera is, Hot Chili soon released a new drill result that ranks as one of the widest intersections the company has recorded at Cortadera and confirmed the high-grade core discovered in the main porphyry (Cuerpo 3) is expanding rapidly. The drill results in question returned: » CRP0061D 813 metres at 0.4 per cent copper and 0.1 grams per tonne gold from 54m depth to end of hole. This included an intercept extending the high-grade core of: 318m at 0.6 per cent copper and 0.2g/t gold from 440m depth. In the lead up to the RIU Sydney Resources Round-up, Hot Chili provided further verification that extensional drilling at the Cortadera copper-gold discovery is on-track to deliver a substantial upgrade to the combined Costa Fuego copper-gold resource in Chile. Costa Fuego’s combined resource base currently sits at 724 million tonnes at 0.48 per cent copper equivalent for 2.9 million tonnes copper, 2.7 million ounces gold, 9.9 million ounces silver and 64,000 tonnes molybdenum and is being expanded toward a Tier-1 copper resource (+5Mt copper).
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New results CRP0046D confirmed a further two wide visual intersections (assays pending for CRD0080 and CRP0047D). In all, Hot Chili has achieved eight meaningful extensional diamond drill intersections since Cortadera’s maiden resource was announced in October 2020. Results for CRP0046D, include: » 114m at 0.5 per cent copper and 0.2g/t gold from 248m down-hole depth and 185m at 0.5 per cent copper and 0.2g/t gold from 568m down-hole depth, including additional silver and molybdenum credits. While all this was happening, Hot Chili added a new land holding, named Santiago Z, to the company’s Costa Fuego copper development in Chile. Santiago Z contains a large historical soil molybdenum anomaly that is approximately twice as large as the soil molybdenum anomaly related to the Cortadera copper-gold porphyry discovery, located just 5km to the north. Santiago Z adds an additional 20 per cent (5,468ha) to Hot Chili’s Costa Fuego landholdings. Subsequent work carried out at Santiago Z provided further evidence of the potential for Cortadera to be part of larger regional copper porphyry cluster on the Chilean coastal range. Soil results and mapping confirmed the presence of a large copper porphyry footprint measuring over four kilometres in length and 2km in width at the Santiago Z landholding, located immediately south of Cortadera. Santiago Z contains a large historical XRF soil molybdenum anomaly that is twice the size and four times the tenor of the soil molybdenum anomaly related to the Cortadera copper-gold porphyry discovery. Hot Chili is also conducting RC drilling at Cortadera North where a total of eight first-pass RC drill holes have been completed. An additional three RC drill holes remain to be drilled and the company expects to report results once all assays have been received and compiled. Multielement pathfinder results will be key to determining potential areas for second-pass diamond drill hole tails and RC follow-up drilling at Cortadera North.
EMAIL admin@hotchili.net.au WEB www.hotchili.net.au DIRECTORS Murray Black, Christian Easterday, Dr Allan Trench, Roberto de Andraca Adriasola, Randall Nickson