Amid the looming copper deficit, World Copper (TSXV:WCU) CEO Gordon Neal believes the market needs to look at more nimble operations, like the company’s Zonia copper oxide project in Arizona, US, for a less expensive and faster path to production.
Neal first explained the problem with the large sulfide deposits major copper companies are developing.
“The majors are spending billions of dollars to put these into production. The average is probably anywhere between $2 billion to $6 billion, some even $10 billion. And the timeline to get them into production is anywhere between eight to 12 years for permitting,” he said.
“We need copper now. So most of us think that we’re going to look down market to smaller, more nimble, cheaper, faster-to-production scenarios — mainly the oxide deposits,” he continued. According to Neal, only 15 percent of the world’s copper deposits are oxides.
The Zonia copper oxide project is a past producer located on private land, factors that Neal said will make it easier to bring back into production. The project also has a stockpile of 7 million tons of unprocessed ore on the last leach pad grading 0.4 percent copper.
“I’ve got private land, a 1:1 strip (ratio), power, water and a stockpile of ore that can give me pre-production revenue,” Neal said. “It doesn’t get any better than this.”
Zonia’s mineral resource estimate includes 75.7 million short tons grading 0.3 percent total copper (indicated resource) containing 450.5 million pounds of copper, and 122 million short tons grading 0.24 percent total copper (inferred resource) containing 575.4 million pounds of copper.
Watch the full interview with World Copper CEO Gordon Neal above.
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