Hot Chili: A strategic land acquisition that will make this massive copper-gold project even bigger!
Hot Chili Managing Director Christian Easterday on 3AW, 2GB, 4BC & 6PR Bulls N' Bears Report
Listen to ASX-listed Hot Chili Managing Director Christian Easterday talk to Matt Birney on the Bulls N’ Bears Report about a strategic land acquisition that is likely to make the largest copper-gold project on the ASX outside of BHP even larger.
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RADIO INTERVIEW - TRANSCRIPT
Matt Birney - Welcome to Bulls N' Bears brought to you today by copper-gold developer Hot Chili.
Matt Birney - ASX code: HCH
Matt Birney - I'm Matt Birney and I'm joined now by the Managing Director of Hot Chili, Christian Easterday.
Matt Birney - Hi Christian.
Christian Easterday - Hi Matt
Matt Birney - Okay so Hot Chili is developing its Costa Fuego porphyry copper-gold project in Chili where it likely now has the largest endowment of unmined copper and gold of any company on the ASX outside of BHP. In April this year Hot Chili picked up some ground about 30kms to the south of Costa Fuego but at the time did not manage to get the central piece of that ground that contains an old historic copper-gold open pit – a piece of the puzzle that fell into place this week.
Matt Birney - Okay Christian we'll get to that in a moment but firstly how big is the resource at Costa Fuego now?
Christian Easterday - Very substantial. A top 10 undeveloped copper resource, about 1 billion tonnes at around 0.45 per cent copper equivalent for about 3.4 million tonnes of contained copper and 3 million ounces of gold.
Matt Birney - Okay so you've just locked away a deal to potentially buy some ground to the south of Costa Fuego, that looks a little strategic, the project known as La Verde. What are the specific geological indicators that led you to that ground?
Christian Easterday - Well let's start with a 800 metre long open pit that was privately mined and never drilled under, that's a great place to start but substantial exploration in the ground has confirmed a very large footprint of about 1.4 km by 1.2 km that has been consolidated by Hot Chili for the first time ever.
Matt Birney - Now surrounding La Verde is a larger piece of ground that you also picked up, I think back in April, known as Domeyko, what are the indicators of mineralization on Domeyko?
Christian Easterday - Multiple historic high-grade mines in the area. This is a big push by the company to put the last elements of consolidation into our project and take our resource base from 1 billion tonnes towards 2 billion tonnes.
Matt Birney - Okay what's the strategy here? You obviously already have a massive resource at Costa Fuego, how does the new ground play into the grand plan there?
Christian Easterday - Continuing on the theme of low elevation consolidation, we have a very low capital intensity project that's at a billion tonnes and ultimately this is about taking our mine life growth towards 30 years on what is one of the most near term meaningful copper projects in the pipeline. One of only five projects outside of the majors capable of producing 100,000 tonnes of fine copper production annually.
Matt Birney - Now I see you're developing a separate water business in Chile a bit curious. What are the key assets, just quickly that Hot Chili has to enable it to get into the water business?
Christian Easterday - Look 12 years to be able to secure our own maritime concession to take water from the ocean. That's important in Chile. You aren't able to take water out of the ground to develop mines. We have the only license in the entire Huasco region and we'll be looking to utilize that to effectively fund our copper project by looking to bring in a major partner.
Matt Birney - Christian Easterday from Hot Chili.
Matt Birney - Thanks for joining me on Bulls N' Bears and remember we're only here to give you information, not advice, which you should of course seek independently.
Matt Birney - I'm Matt Birney and this is Bulls N' Bears.
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