Southern Hemisphere Mining reports gold discovery at previously underexplored Chile project
Trenching at the Colina2 gold project has returned assays grading up to 9.46g/t gold.
North of Santiago in central Chile, the Colina2 gold project was picked up in 2012 by Southern Hemisphere Mining (ASX: SUH) but has spent most of the time since on the backburner — until now.
Colina2 is now being described as “a new gold discovery” after trenching returned assays grading up to 9.46 grams per tonne gold.
Southern Hemisphere director Keith Coughlan told Small Caps there has not previously been much activity at Colina2.
“There has not been a lot spent,” he said, adding the project has spent most of its time as a “side issue”.
Instead, Southern Hemisphere has been more focused hitherto on the two key items in its portfolio — the Los Pumas manganese and the Llahuin copper-gold projects, also in Chile.
But recently the rising gold price led the company to take another look at Colina2.
The trenching has confirmed the potential for high-grade gold mineralisation of a northeast-southwest trending fault at Colina2. The gold-in-soil anomaly is about 1km long.
Other trench samples assayed at 3.29g/t, 3.25g/t, 2.23g/t and 1.49g/t gold.
Southern Hemisphere said the sampling has confirmed an anomaly that was revealed when the company re-interpreted previous geophysical work.
Drill rig will test anomaly down dip
Colina2 covers 259 hectares (2.59sq km) and is located 9km from the El Espino copper mine, which is in the process of development.
Mr Coughlan described the find as “quite exciting”.
More trenching work will now take place, followed by drilling down dip.
He said the company had expected delays obtaining a rig due to COVID-19 but, on the contrary, equipment is being mobilised quite quickly.
Southern Hemisphere will soon release an exploration timeline.
Experienced explorer in Chile
The company describes itself as an experienced explorer in Chile. It discovered both its copper and manganese projects.
The Llahuin copper-gold project is located near the city of Illapel, 250km north of Santiago, and sits 1,300m above sea level.
It has a measured plus indicated JORC resource of 149 million tonnes at 0.29% copper, 0.12g/t gold and 0.008% molybdenum.
The Los Pumas manganese project lies 175km from the port of Arica and has a JORC resource of 23.73Mt at 7.81% manganese.