The shares surged 25% intraday before closing up 18.3% at C35c, capitalising Altiplano at about C$20 million. They got to 56c in January after touching 13c late last year.

Altiplano is busy with two concurrent bulk sample campaigns on the 395m and 401m levels. The undertaking has extracted 10,585t of copper-iron-gold vein material, of which 6,020t have been shipped for toll milling, and 3,655t remains stockpiled on site.

The company said on Friday its contractors had steadily increased productivity over the past three months and were also on pace to achieve 5,000t in the coming month.

Altiplano recently released a maiden inferred resource for Farellon, outlining 278,360t grading an average 1.92% copper and 0.12 parts per million gold at a lower cut-off grade of 1% copper. These results were constrained using a minimum horizontal width of 1.2m, but the actual average higher-grade vein width is said to be 1.84m.

Altiplano expects to further upgrade resources to the indicated category this summer.