Modern Mining August 2023

COPPER

Copper 360 – unlocking the copper chest

JSE-listed junior copper producer, Copper 360, is eyeing mid-tier status as it targets pro duction of between 20 000 tpa and 30 000 tpa of copper in the next two-to-three years, says CEO Jan Nelson, whose ambition it is to create a new copper district using the cluster mining model developed by its chair, Shirley Hayes. By Nelendhre Moodley .

“ A s the only junior copper miner in the indus try, Copper 360 has no competition from a peer group point of view and, while our production at this stage is relatively small, with the assets we have on hand we will, in the near future, become one of the leading copper producers in Africa.” Formed in November 2022, following a reverse take-over of copper producer, Big Tree Copper, and copper mining company, SHiP Copper, Copper 360 is focused on producing premium copper that will yield a high cash margin.

through a process of environmental clean-up, and mining surface and shallow copper resources. The company acquired an extensive database from companies such as American mining conglomer ate Newmont and global gold company Gold Fields, who worked the district before – and this, says Nelson, gives the company a significant competitive advantage. “Our attraction is really the fact that we have one mining license that covers virtually an entire cop per district and extremely high copper grades. We have on-surface and underground deposits, with the underground deposits already developed. The recent discovery of on-surface deposits ensures that the cost of production remains low, with the added benefit of ease of extraction. In essence, with very little effort, we will be able to unlock further value from the project rather quickly.” Latest developments from the pure play copper producer, which listed on the JSE in April, include recent drilling results that have confirmed the valid ity of information from the data-sets supplied by Newmont and Goldfields, which operated the mine during the 1980s and 1990s. “We inherited significant datasets from Newmont and Goldfields that illustrate where the orebodies lie. The results from our recent drilling programme validate the information from the datasets, which

(Photo by Matian Willemse).

Copper 360 CEO, Jan Nelson.

The company, which has a min ing right that covers 19 000 hectares to the north of the town of Springbok, holds 12 copper mines (some with developed infra structure) and 60 copper prospects with advanced geological datasets. It is estimated that the life-of mine across the various operations is well over 200 years. The Copper 360 business is focused on processing his torical mined copper rock dumps

Copper Ore Body (Photo by Matian Willemse).

16  MODERN MINING  August 2023