The Castillo Copper Ltd (ASX: CCZ) share price has surged 47% at the time of writing after the company released exploration results from its Big One deposit in Queensland.
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About Castillo Copper
Castillo Copper is an Australian-based explorer focused on copper across Australia and Zambia. The company is embarking on a strategic transformation to morph into a mid-tier copper producer. Castillo currently has four properties:
- Mt Oxide project in the Mt Isa copper-belt district, north-west Queensland, which delivers significant exploration upside through having several high-grade targets
- Four high-quality prospective assets across Zambia's copper-belt, which is the second largest copper producer in Africa
- A large tenure footprint proximal to Broken Hill's world-class deposit that is prospective for zinc, silver, lead, copper and gold
- Cangai Copper Mine in northern New South Wales, which is one of Australia's highest grading historic copper mines.
The Big One deposit
One of Castillo's priorities has been developing its Mt Oxide Project, especially progressing drilling campaigns at the Big One deposit.
Today, the company announced "game changing assays", which significantly extend the known mineralisation at the high-grade Big One deposit. This discovery pushed the Castillo share price up by 47% to 6.5 cents at the time of writing.
Castillo Copper's Managing Director Simon Paull commented:
We are delighted to receive assays of this calibre, especially with global copper supplies tight. There is now compelling evidence Big One Deposit is a shallow, high-grade copper-cobalt system that can potentially scale further. The Board is now ramping up forward development work and the modelling of a maiden JORC compliant resource.
There is an expected pause in drilling activities due to the commencement of the wet seasons across northern Australia. However, the company announced a geophysics campaign is being formulated to identify new bedrock conductors and potential test-drill targets.
In addition, the board has instructed the Castillo geology team to commence modelling a JORC compliant resource based on available historic and fresh data. If the outcome of the geological modelling is positive, then the board expects to commence applying for a fresh mining lease.
The Castillo share price is up by 170% on this time last year. On current prices, Castillo has a market capitalisation of $65.92 million.
