CUPRUM METALSLeigh Creek Copper Mine.
A brownfield oxide copper operation in the North Flinders Ranges, roughly 500 km north of Adelaide. Resource in the ground, processing on site, permits in place.
24,900 tonnes of contained copper.
The current JORC 2012 oxide resource is 3.6 Mt at 0.7% Cu, for 24,900 tonnes of contained copper, across four brownfield deposits on active mining leases: Lynda, Lorna Doone, Mountain of Light and Mount Coffin.
The resource was defined by the historical drilling campaigns of the 1960s to 1980s. Sulphide mineralisation has been reported beneath the oxide zones, and is excluded from the current economics.
Oxide at surface, sulphide beneath.
The oxide copper at surface, the malachite staining the old timers followed, is the surface expression of a deeper mineralised system. Regional work describes primary sulphide mineralisation as chalcopyrite hosted in quartz and carbonate veins.
Sulphide intersections have been reported below shallow oxide zones at Lynda and Lorna Doone. The district is host to more than 660 known copper occurrences and remains, for the most part, untested by modern geophysics or systematic drilling.
Heap leach to cement copper.
Proven unit operations, existing equipment, low capital intensity. The route from oxide ore to saleable copper is short.
Heap leach
Oxide ore is stacked on existing leach pads and irrigated. Copper dissolves into the pregnant solution as it percolates through the heap.
Cone cementation
Solution is passed through Kennecott cone reactors, where copper is precipitated onto iron as cement copper.
Product
Cement copper at +70% Cu is filtered, dried and bagged on site, then sold through the existing offtake pathway.
Permits in place. PepR approved.
The project holds mining licences and an approved Program for Environment Protection and Rehabilitation, the operating permit under South Australian mining law. In this jurisdiction, at this stage of readiness, that is uncommon.
Renewal applications for the exploration and mining licences are lodged and progressing. The regulatory framework lets technical work, operational planning and funding advance in parallel rather than one after another.
The path to production is shorter than greenfield.
Read how the district consolidates around a single processing centre.
The district