Copper mining and marketing company Copper 360 is on the home straight to produce quite a bit of cash by financial year-end.

That was the main takeaway from Engineering News & Mining Weekly’s post-results Zoom interview with the head of the only pure copper play listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE).

“We’re cash positive on both plants and building up, within the next three months, to R70-million of monthly revenue, with a profit margin of 50%,” Copper 360 CEO Jan Nelson disclosed.

The JSE AltX-listed copper producer is advancing promisingly in South Africa’s well-endowed Northern Cape, which from 1935 to 1980 developed into one of the world’s major copper producing districts, until a copper price downturn resulted in mining in the district coming to a standstill by 2005.

Interestingly, one of Copper 360’s 100%-owned subsidiaries is Okiep Copper Company, which US mining company Newmont established in 1937. Under Newmont, the Okiep Copper Company is said to have paid out about R30-million in dividends every year during the 25 years that it operated in the Northern Cape.

Today, Copper 360 is focused on processing historical mined copper rock dumps through a process of environmental clean-up, and mining surface and shallow copper resources.

It holds more than 19 000 ha with 12 orebodies that include Rietberg, Jubilee, Homeep, Klondike, Wheal Julia North, Whyte’s West, Koeëlkop, Hoogkraal and Waaihoek, as well as some 60 exploration prospects.

Current focus is on Tweefontein, Homeep East and the satellite deposits next to them, with easily accessible orebodies enabling ongoing drilling.

As a consequence of the drilling, Rietberg, the first of the dozen resources to yield, turned out to be 220% greater than historical data indicated, resulting in a maiden and indicated resource of 60 800 t of copper already being declared.

The company has three copper processing plants that will produce within the next three months. The rock for these will come from both Reitberg and Jubilee, which provides flexibility.

Guided is positive revenue of R1.2-billion to R1.9-billion in the current financial year, which ends in February next year.

The Rietberg rock will go into the Nama plant and the solvent extraction and electrowinning, or SX/EW, plant, which are both gearing up. Then, in about two months, a third processing plant, the MFP1 plant, will have been constructed.

In terms of mining projects, resource estimates for Jubilee, Homeep East, and Tweefontein have been completed and mining engineers are doing mine optimisation studies.

Engineering News & Mining Weekly: Are the studies being done still pointing to Tweefontein being a possible Chile-type, DRC-type major mine – but with much better grades?

Nelson: We’re currently seeing that there’s potentially 1.2-billion tons to 1.5-billion tons of copper metal in the ground and we reckon that those mines can produce anywhere between 50 000 t to 100 000 t of copper metal a year, at grades of between 1.5% to 2.5% copper. They are the size of some of the mines that you see in the DRC. The sizes of the orebodies that we are busy delineating are significant. That’s why you’ll see our growth profile also jumps from 20 000 t next year to 50 000 t the following year. It’s because of these orebodies being able to feed into our production profile.

What looks like being the biggest eventual mine in the Copper 360 project pipeline?

Certainly, Tweefontein will be one of the biggest. It was historically the highest grade mine in the area and it certainly looks like it could potentially become the biggest mine in the group. Newmont mined at Tweefontein and it was one of the highest grade mines. At one stage, the grades were almost up to 10% to 15% copper. We’re not seeing those grades. We’re seeing grades of between 1.5%, 2.5% and 3% copper but over significant widths, and there’s still a lot of ore left.

How much copper tailings material does Copper 360 have on surface?

We’ve got about 60-million tons of tailings material on surface and we’ve entered into the joint venture (JV) partnership with DRDGOLD. They’ve completed their drilling, and they’re busy with the analysis of the samples in the laboratory at the moment, so we’re waiting for the results. But, at this stage, the JV is still pretty much alive, and I think the future will be guided by the assay results that we receive back. After that, one will have to do metallurgical testwork, and DRD is driving that. They’re doing the sampling, then they’ll do the testwork, and that will determine whether it’s viable for us to process these dumps.

Will the studies, assays and testwork be completed this year?

They’ll definitely be completed this year. The testwork will probably take about another two months, or so. There’s quite a lot of testwork one has to do and with these deposits, getting the capital profile right is important. You have to push quite a lot of volume on these projects. But those studies will be finished in the year.