Aftermath Silver Ltd (TSX-V:AAG, OTCQX:AAGFF) earlier this week outlined its dual-drilling strategy at two key assets in Peru and Chile.
The company said it had commenced a 4,000 to 6,000-metre drilling program at the Berenguela project in southern Peru. According to CEO Ralph Rushton, the campaign includes engineering-focused drilling to assess areas likely to be mined first, as well as exploration work on the project’s eastern side, where previous drilling returned long intercepts of high-grade copper.
Proactive: You're announcing the drills are going to be turning at both of your projects. So why don't we start with Berenguela and then move on to your other project. Tell me what's going to happen.
Ralph Rushton: (At) Berenguela, we are drilling between 4,000 to 6,000 metres. There are various objectives with the program. Some are engineering objectives. We want to put some holes into the area where we think the initial mining will begin a few years down the road. So a little bit of geotechnical and investigation of that area.
We're also doing some exploration drilling on the eastern side of the project, where we have some extremely long intercepts of fairly high-grade copper. Given the way the critical metals demand is heading at the moment — copper is a metal that’s going to be in demand. We have an area that we believe is enriched in it. So it behooves us to actually do some exploration in that part of the project.
And you mentioned where the prices are. That’s really what’s driving all of this, right? Because there's a general need to get down and see exactly what you have and how you can expand.
Yeah. Given that we’re looking at both silver and copper — I mean, as of this morning, silver is trading close to $64 an ounce. So the potential valuations of a lot of the silver projects out there are climbing every day. So yeah, we would really like to find some additional high grade in there. That’s part of the drilling going on as well.
And how about your other project?
Challacollo is a project we've had for about five or six years. It’s one of the first projects we acquired. We’ve held off drilling it primarily because our focus was on Berenguela. But we now have additional funding in the bank, and we believe it’s time to put some holes into that and see if there's potential to expand the resource.
So we’re going to be drilling what's called the Lolón vein — it’s the main vein at Challacollo. We’ll be looking at two extensions — potentially down dip extensions of it as well. And we’ll be doing some exploration drilling away from the main veins to see if there’s any additional potential on the project.
It’s a relatively modest program, but I think if we see success, we’ll probably continue the drilling.
Well, it seems like Peru and Chile are really being talked about in the last little while, I guess obviously because of where metal prices are at. But there's a lot of work going on in both countries.
There is. And it's actually been a little bit of an issue for us in Chile because there’s a huge demand for drill rigs there. Anybody that’s got a copper, silver, or gold project is trying to drill at the moment. So it has an impact for us in terms of the availability of the equipment we need to do these projects.
And you're expecting assays in 2026?
Hopefully first quarter. With Christmas coming up and a lot of drill projects underway, the labs are pretty backed up at the moment. But we’ll do our best to get the results turned around as fast as we can.
Quotes have been lightly edited for style and clarity