Great Southern Copper has commenced scout reverse circulation (RC) drilling at the Artemisa North porphyry copper target within the Especularita Project in Chile.
Recent drilling at the nearby Piedras Blancas site has confirmed a strong porphyry copper-style alteration system.
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At Artemisa North, drilling includes four planned holes aimed at exploring a phyllic alteration system and testing beneath historical copper workings.
Rock chip geochemistry has recorded grades up to 1.21% copper, alongside 0.6 grams per tonne gold and 201 parts per million molybdenum traces.
The system remains open under shallow cover to the north and east, with no previous drilling conducted.
The location offers access to infrastructure, lying along the trend of major copper deposits such as Los Pelambres, Altar and El Pachon.
Great Southern Copper possesses the rights to 100% of the target.
The Piedras Blancas site saw the completion of four scout RC holes totalling 574m.
These holes intersected strong phyllic alteration, with deeper transitions into potassic alteration containing sulphide mineralisation.
This evidence suggests that a porphyry copper setting exists at shallower depths than previously anticipated, increasing the prospectivity of the La Colorada lithocap.
All samples have been dispatched to ALS Laboratories for analysis.
The Artemisa North prospect is located 1.5km south of Piedras Blancas on the western margin of the La Colorada lithocap.
This area serves as the primary porphyry copper target within the company’s flagship Especularita project.
Future steps at Especularita include expanding drilling to the Artemisa South and Victoria prospects to continue exploring porphyry-related mineralisation.
Additional projects involve conducting geophysical surveys at Cerro Negro and the La Colorada lithocap, which are expected to start in May 2026.
Great Southern Copper CEO Sam Garrett said: “Artemisa North is the second of four targets to be tested with scout RC drilling in the current porphyry exploration programme.
“This programme is focusing on targets on the western margin of the La Colorada lithocap that display geological, geochemical and spectral features that are characteristic of porphyry copper systems.
“In particular, we aim to confirm that large-footprint zones of leached and oxidised quartz-sericite-pyrite alteration mapped at surface may represent the “phyllic” alteration zone enveloping a copper-gold porphyry system.”
