PERTH (miningweekly.com) – A scoping study into an oxide option at ASX-listed Hot Chili’s Productora copper project, in Chile, has indicated that the project could produce an additional 8 000 t/y to 10 000 t/y of copper cathode.
The scoping study revealed that a two-million-tonne-a-year heap leach option at Productora could deliver between 6 000 t/y and 6 500 t/y of copper cathode, and would require an initial capital investment of between $80-million and $90-million.
Hot Chili told shareholders that the current prefeasibility study (PFS) on the Productora project would be expanded to include a sizeable copper oxide project.
The initial PFS did not consider the possibility of processing the oxide material contained at the project, and instead focused on an upgraded 165.2-million-ton resource estimate.
A previous scoping study into the project found that without the oxide component, the Productora project could support a processing rate of about 11-million tons a year, to produce around 220 000 t of ore, grading 25% copper and 6 g/t gold.
However, Hot Chili noted that the new PFS would include a three-million- to four-million-tonne-a-year heap leach operation followed by a solvent extraction electrowinning circuit with the potential to produce between 8 000 t/y and 10 000 t/y of copper cathode for a period of between six and eight years, in addition to the targeted copper-in-concentrate production of between 45 000 t/y and 55 000 t/y.
With the PFS now advancing, Hot Chili said it was confident of starting a definitive feasibility study on Productora before the end of the year.
With the inclusion of the oxide mineral resource, and the addition of the recent Alice porphyry copper discovery, Hot Chili was expected to deliver an upgrade to its resource and ore reserve estimates.