Culpeo Minerals confirms shallow, high-grade potential of Lana Corina copper system
Culpeo Minerals’ latest assays from Lana Corina returned a notable interval of 2m at 4.01% copper and 75ppm molybdenum.
Three holes drilled as part of a maiden campaign at Culpeo Minerals’ (ASX: CPO) Lana Corina copper project in Chile have returned shallow, high-grade mineralisation.
The holes were drilled to better understand the near-surface mineralisation and to locate historic underground mine workings at the Lana and Corina breccia pipes.
Best results were 16.4m at 1.32% copper and 30 parts per million molybdenum from 118m, including 2m at 4.01% copper and 75ppm molybdenum from 131m; 20.1m at 1.13% copper and 56ppm molybdenum from 82m; and 7.9m at 1.20% copper and 30ppm molybdenum from 96m.
The mineralisation complements a recent breccia discovery which was drilled to test the T3 ground magnetic anomaly.
High-grade potential
Culpeo managing director Max Tuesley said the results confirm the shallow high-grade potential of the Lana Corina mineralised system and highlight the quality of the project.
“These kinds of grades close to the surface are exactly what we want to see as we work to define an open-pittable copper resource at Lana Corina,” he said.
“The mineralisation we have discovered to date has a footprint of 400m by 500m at surface and is at least 400m deep with excellent potential for expansion.”
Mining was carried out at Lana Corina during the 1970s to a depth of 100m, with approximately 1Mt of ore extracted at copper grades between 1.5% and 2.5%.
Large-scale discovery
Last month, Culpeo confirmed a large-scale copper discovery at Lana Corina which led to the designation of the T2, T4, T6 and T10 high-priority drill targets.
The discovery of outcropping breccia and copper oxide mineralisation associated with several previously-identified geophysical anomalies was described as an “exciting development” for the emerging high-grade project.
The targets are in proximity to the Lana Corina mineralised system where recent drilling uncovered 257m at 0.95% copper and 81ppm molybdenum from 170m; 173m at 1.05% copper and 50ppm molybdenum from 313m; and 81m at 1.06% copper and 145ppm molybdenum from 302m.