The project is located in the commune of La Higuera, nearly 130 km northeast of La Serena, in the province of Elqui, Coquimbo region, northern Chile.

The project consists of an open pit copper mine. The mineral is expected to be processed using bacterial leaching has an estimated production of 15,000t/y copper cathodes.

The regional geology at the Puquios Project is characterised by an assemblage of volcanic rocks with marine sedimentary rocks intercalations belonging to the Bandurrias Group, of Lower Cretaceous age. Upper Cretaceous to Upper Tertiary age Volcanoclastic rocks, assigned to the ViƱitas and Los Elquinos Formations, lie discordant over these units. The package is intruded by batholitic plutonic rocks of granodioritic composition. The ages range of emplacement from Lower Cretaceous to Lower Tertiary age. Modern deposits correspond to gravel and unconsolidated sands in terraces or that fill quebradas and are Quaternary age.

Structurally these units are inserted in the western flank of the Main Andes Cordillera in the area, and show intense deformation of the Mesozoic sequences affected by folds and regional faults.

The District is characterised by outcrops of hydrothermal alteration zones. Their gangue mineralogy defines the occurrence of advanced argilic, quartz sericite, supergene argilic and propylitic assemblages, that are associated with the contacts between the Mesozoic volcanic sequences and the granodioritic intrusive rocks of the Lower Tertiary.

The Puquios deposit exhibits a reddish to brown colour anomaly at surface, elongated in the E-W direction, with its major axis of about 1200 meters and its minor axis of 400 meters respectively. This colour anomaly is closely related, temporally and spatially with the emplacement of a intrusive complex of subvolcanic rocks, of porphyrytic characteristics and variable composition, ranging from monzogranodiorites to dacites, which during intrusion provoked different stages of hydrothermal alteration and mineralization events. The contact relationships, alteration characteristics, mineralization, and areal distribution, permit to classify this kind of deposit as a Cu-Mo Porphyry Copper Deposit of an Upper Cretaceous to Lower Tertiary age.

The gangue mineral assemblages, supergene and hydrothermal, suggest that the alteration events present at the deposit consist of supergene argillic, advanced argillic, late quartz sericite, early quartz sericite, potassic (prograde, retrograde) and propylitic hydrothermal alteration assemblages. Each of these events are characterised by different gangue and ore mineral assemblages that occur in veinlets and/or disseminated form. These assemblages constituted the environment that controlled the later deposition and distribution of the gangue and ore minerals of supergene origin.