Filo reports 1,224 m of 1.26% CuEq at Filo del Sol
Filo Mining Corp. [FIL-TSXV, NASDAQ First North] has reported assay results from one of the best holes drilled so far at the its 100%-owned Filo del Sol project, which straddles the border of Region 111, Chile and San Juan Province, Argentina.
“It confirms the extension of the high-grade breccia intersected last season in Hole 41 and starts to give us an idea of the geometry and extent of this zone,” said Filo President and CEO James Beck.
The company said drill hole FSDHO54 returned 1,224 metres of 1.26% copper equivalent (CuEq) from a depth of 146 metres, including 592 metres at 2.04% CuEq, and 171 metres at 3.22% CuEq.
This intersection lies completely outside the current mineral resource and the high-grade zone remains open to the west, east, north and at depth.
Filo Mining is a member of the Lundin Group of companies. The Filo del Sol project is a high-sulphidation epithermal copper-gold-silver deposit associated with one or more large porphyry gold system.
Filo del Sol is located in the Andes Mountains, 140 kilometres southeast of the Chilean city of Copiapo and was recently the subject of a pre-feasibility study that is based on proven and probable reserves of 259.1 million tonnes, grading 0.39% copper, 0.33 g/t gold, 15.1 g/t silver, or 2.2 billion pounds of copper, 2.7 million ounces of gold and 126 million ounces of silver.
The prefeasibility study envisages annual production of approximately 67,000 tonnes of copper (including copper as a precipitate), 159,000 ounces of gold and 8.6 million ounces of silver at a cost of US$1.23 per pound of copper equivalent.
The pre-production capital cost is estimated at $1.27 billion. Over a 14-year mine life (including pre-stripping) the operation is expected to produce almost 1.75 billion pounds of copper as cathode, and 1.92 million ounces of gold and 104 million ounces of silver as dore over a 13-year leach feed schedule.
The company has said it is convinced that Filo Del Sol will turn out to be one of the most important copper-gold-silver discoveries in recent years.
FSDHO54 was collared 60 metres to the east of, and parallel to, FSDH041, which returned 163 metres at 5.43% CuEq from 780 depth within a broader interval of 858 metres at 1.80% CuEq. FSDH054 was drilled 324 metres past the end of FSDH041, ending in mineralization, with the last 20 metres at 0.50% CuEQ (0.38% copper, 0.28 g/t gold and 1.2 g/t silver), indicating that the deposit is wide open at depth.
Hole FSDH041 was described as the first intersection of a long-sought feeder zone for the high-sulphidation mineralization at Filo
The company said it is currently assessing the technical feasibility of drilling to depths of at least 2.0 kilometres later in the year.
Wide-spaced drilling over the past to years has discovered a higher-grade section of a regional north, north east trending structure that has been mapped from Filo del Sol to the Los Helados copper-gold porphyry deposit located 18 kilometres to the north, northeast.
The higher-grade section of this structure, now called the Aurora Zone, extends along a length of at least 700 metres, and contains at least one elevated grade section, Breccia 41, as indicated by assay results in FSDH054 and FSDHO41.
On January 19, 2022, Filo Mining shares closed at $15.85 and now trade in a 52-week range of $16.02 and $1.75.