PERTH (miningweekly.com) - The board of copper junior Hot Chili has given the green light for the start of a prefeasibility study (PFS) on its Productora copper project, after a scoping study nearly doubled the resource estimate and delivered favourable results.
The PFS would be based on an upgraded 165.2-million-ton resource estimate, and would benefit from a second resource upgrade expected in the second half of the year.
The study would assess the establishment of an opencut mining operation, a copper concentrator processing facility, as well as other associated infrastructure.
The recently completed scoping study found that the Productora project could support a processing rate of around 11-million tons a year, to produce around 220 000 t of ore, grading 25% copper and 6 g/t gold.
Development costs for the project have been estimated at between A$500-million and A$700-million, while C1 operating costs were estimated at between $1.20/lb and $1.50/lb.
Meanwhile, the scoping study also nearly doubled the resource at Productora, which now stood at 165.2-million, grading 0.6% copper, 0.1 g/t gold, and 132 g/t molybdenum for 920 000 t of copper, 590 000 oz of gold and 22 000 t of molybdenum.
Chairperson Murray Black said on Wednesday that Hot Chili had met its key major growth target, in line with the timetable provided to the market.
“The project continues to deliver strong growth and the company is on track to establish Productora as one of the leading large-scale copper developments in Chile’s coastal range,” he added.
MD Christian Easterday added that the next nine months promised to be another rewarding growth phase for the company, as it stared prefeasibility work.
“With funding now secured for 2013, Hot Chili has an opportunity to establish itself as one of the leading emerging copper producers on the ASX, in a relatively short timeframe.”