The playbook — copper · September 7, 2026
Panoro's long copper holes and a first skarn hit at Cotabambas
Two step-out holes stretch the South Pit deposit from surface to 1,100 m, and a maiden endoskarn cut opens a new question.
Panoro Minerals drilled two more holes into the South Pit zone of its Cotabambas project in southern Peru and hit copper over enormous lengths. Hole CB-230 ran mineralization for 808.15 metres at 0.31% copper-equivalent (a way of adding gold and silver value into one copper number). Inside that stretch sat a 156.5-metre core at 0.55% and a 48.1-metre slice at 0.76% copper-equivalent — genuine higher grade, but narrow. The nearby hole CB-229 returned 303.3 metres at 0.25%, with a 69.9-metre higher-grade core inside it at 0.52%. The eye-catcher is buried in the detail: the company logged its first-ever endoskarn intersection, a rock type that can flag a richer system underneath a porphyry.
The way to judge a copper porphyry is width and continuity, not bonanza grades — and on that measure CB-230 delivers. Panoro says the deposit now runs from surface down to 1,100 metres over about 600 metres of strike, with true width widening from 150 metres near surface to 600 metres at depth. That extends a known 222-million-tonne higher-grade component. The endoskarn matters because the same skarn style hosts giant Peruvian mines like Las Bambas and Constancia. On a relative-performance basis: PML.V rose 43.6% over three months while copper itself gained only 5.6% and the copper-equity peer basket returned 12.8% — a steady re-rating rather than a one-day spike, roughly 3.4 times the peer index. CEO Luquman Shaheen has spent 18-plus years advancing this single asset; the public record shows no prior deposit-to-production exit, and the company funded drilling through repeated equity raises, including a C$21 million offering upsized in May 2026.
Here is the honest ledger. The grades are moderate for a porphyry — bulk zones sit at 0.25% to 0.35% copper-equivalent, and even the best includes only reach 0.5% to 0.76%. This is a scale story, not a rich one. The copper-equivalent figure leans on elevated price assumptions (copper at US$6.56/lb, gold at US$4,414/oz), which flatter the number versus contained copper. The 600-metre-strike and 1,100-metre-depth continuity claims rest on just three widely spaced holes, with infill still pending. And the skarn upside is interpretive — a target, not a drilled result. The cut-off grade for the reported intercepts was not stated. Next up: assays from step-out holes CB-231, CB-232 and CB-233; initial metallurgical results in early Q4 2026; and a TITAN deep geophysics survey over Target #7, starting October with results expected by December.