Copper Mountain Mining Corp has completed a Base Case PEA on its 75% owned New Ingerbelle property, which is located 1 km from the company’s flagship operation, the Copper Mountain mine, in southern British Columbia.
New Ingerbelle is expected to have total production of 768 Mlb of copper and 550,300 oz of gold over its mine life, based on Measured and Indicated Resources only. The production plan assumes the use of Copper Mountain mine’s existing mine equipment fleet and mill. Highlights from the New Ingerbelle PEA are summarized below:
- After-tax NPV (8%); $394 million
- After-tax IRR; 65%
- Average annual life of mine copper equivalent (CuEq) production (years 1-5); 112 Mlb
- Average annual copper production (years 1-5); 85 Mlb
- Average annual gold production (years 1-5); 61,000 oz
- Mine life; 12 years
- C1 cash cost; $1.52/lb of copper produced.
“New Ingerbelle represents a low capital, low risk, high quality development project in a worldclass mining jurisdiction,” said Gil Clausen, Copper Mountain’s President and CEO. “Our next steps include evaluating various operational alternatives to test against this base case, which assumes supplanting Copper Mountain mine production. We will study incorporating New Ingerbelle into the Copper Mountain mine plan using the existing mill and study expanding the mill at Copper Mountain to increase the combined annual production. New Ingerbelle should give us tremendous flexibility as we execute our low risk growth strategy. This PEA demonstrates just how much potential value this project holds.”
The New Ingerbelle mine design uses a $2.75/lb copper price Whittle pit shell (Measured and Indicated Resources only) generated using actual costs from the adjacent Copper Mountain mine as a basis. Metal recoveries are based on historical Ingerbelle mill recoveries and metallurgical test work conducted on recent exploration drill core from the New Ingerbelle deposit.
The Whittle pit shell was used as the basis for an ultimate design pit, which has a final haul road and waste dump designs incorporated. This ultimate pit was sequenced to produce a life of mine (LOM) plan which includes three pushback phases that include haul roads. The study used the haulage profiles to determine mining equipment requirements. Capital and operating costs, along with copper and gold recoveries that were used, are outlined in the tables below. The PEA is based on the Mineral Resource which was previously published on September 21, 2018.
The PEA assumes New Ingerbelle mill feed would be trucked to the Copper Mountain operation, using Copper Mountain’s existing mine equipment fleet, the 40,000 t/d mill and tailings facility. Total mill feed mined is expected to be 175 Mt and total waste is expected to be 250 Mt for a low strip ratio of 1.43:1. The production plan for New Ingerbelle is based only on Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources. All 24.6 Mt of Inferred Resources mined were considered as waste in the pit optimization and LOM scheduling.
A summary of mining and production parameters is provided below.
- Total copper production 768 Mlb
- Total gold production 550,300 oz
- Total silver production 1,755,900 oz
- Average annual copper production (years 1-5) 85,100,000 lb
- Average annual gold production (years 1-5) 61,400 oz
- Average annual silver production (years 1-5) 195,100 oz
- Average copper recovery 83%
- Average gold recovery 65%
- Average silver recovery 65%
- Average copper feed grade (years 1-5) 0.32%
- Average gold feed grade (years 1-5) 0.20 g/t
- Average silver feed grade (year 1-5) 0.64 g/t.
The total initial capital cost required to start operations at New Ingerbelle is estimated to be some $130 million. The estimate is largely due to the cost to complete a 3-km access road from New Ingerbelle to the Copper Mountain mine, pre-stripping and miscellaneous infrastructure upgrades. Total life of mine sustaining capital is expected to be $63 million, which is mainly for mining equipment replacement and tailings dam expansions.
Average C1 cash costs, net of by product credits, are approximately $1.52/lb of copper. Total operating costs are estimated to be $9.66/t milled, which includes mining costs of $3.06/t milled and processing costs of $5.32/t milled. Mining costs on a per tonne moved basis are estimated to be $1.46/t mined.
