Solaris Resources (TSXV: SLS) has reported new assay results that feature strong copper intercepts from its flagship Warintza project in southeastern Ecuador, about 85 km east of the city of Cuenca in the Cordillera del C??ndor, an inland mountain range forming the border between Ecuador and Peru.
The company reported results from three drill holes, part of a 40,000 metre diamond drill program, that returned long intervals of high-grade mineralization from surface.
Highlights included a 1,004 metre intercept from hole SLS-04 that returned 0.59% copper, 0.03% molybdenum, and 0.05 gram gold per tonne (0.71% copper-equivalent) from surface. The intercept included 824 metres of 0.64% copper, 0.03% molybdenum and 0.05 gram gold (0.77% copper-equivalent). The company said this hole was drilled far beyond the 138-metre length of a corresponding historical hole, and bottomed in mineralization.
Drill hole SLS-05 returned 918 metres of 0.43% copper, 0.01% molybdenum and 0.04 gram gold (0.50% copper-equivalent), and included a 306 metre section of 0.52% copper, 0.02% molybdenum and 0.04 gram gold (0.62% copper-equivalent).
The third hole, SLS-06, cut 884 metres of 0.50% copper, 0.03% molybdenum and 0.04 gram gold (0.62% copper-equivalent).
"SLS-05 also extended mineralization to the southwest at depth," Jorge Fierro, the company's vice president of exploration, stated in a press release.
The company is continuing its drilling program in order to test for major extensions of mineralization. They also recently finished a geophysical survey of Warintza, the first one of its kind in the property's history.
According to Daniel Earle, Solaris' president and CEO, the assay results continue to show that Warintza Central has "the potential to become a large, high-grade, open pit copper porphyry deposit."
Warintza Central has an inferred resource of 124 million tonnes grading 0.56% copper, 0.03% molybdenum and 0.1 gram gold (0.70% copper-equivalent).
Solaris, part of the Augusta Group of companies, has been led since January by executive chairman Richard Warke. Besides the Warintza copper-gold project in Ecuador, the company has assets in Chile and Peru, as well as a 60% interest in the development stage La Verde joint venture project with Teck Resources (TSX: TECK.A/TECK.B; NYSE: TCK) in Mexico.