The revived Rietberg copper mine is on its way to becoming the cash cow of Copper 360, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange AltX-listed company which this month produced the first copper ore in the O’Kiep Copper District since 1983.

The underground mine is one of a dozen dormant copper mines spread across Copper 360’s consolidated mining licence area of 19 000 ha.

Its reopening advances the company from producing copper plate to producing copper concentrate.

It is now on the way to producing 45 000 t a month at a grade of 1.6% copper, bringing to an end four decades of copper dormancy in the well-endowed district of South Africa’s Northern Cape.

“We’re transitioning from spending capital to now generating cash, becoming extremely cash positive, able to pay a dividend, and then fund our growth from internal cash flow,” Copper 360 CEO Jan Nelson told Engineering News & Mining Weekly in a Zoom interview.

Eighty per cent of the company’s revenue will be generated from copper concentrate, significantly growing its cash margin.

“We’ve got the offtake agreements in place for all the ore that’ll come from Reitberg,” said Nelson.

The ore is being processed at the Nama Copper Modular Flotation Plant, which was recently acquired from Mazule Resources, and in two months Copper 360’s second plant will treat Reitberg ore.

“This achievement is a credit to our executive and management and the grit and determination of the Namakwaland people that come from the communities in the area, and who form part of our Copper 360 team,” he said.

Plant recoveries of 75% to 85% are being targeted during startup, with previous testwork reporting recoveries of 92% are possible.

“We’re slowly building up from about 12 000 t of production this month to about almost 46 000 t of production over the next three to four months, so Rietberg’s now going to become our cash cow,” Nelson enthused about the asset that has a measured and indicated resource of 4 782 000 t at 1.27% copper, representing 60 800 t of copper metal.

Sampling from draw points underground yielded values of 6.08%, 1.89%, 1.54%, 3.11%, 2.39%, 5.64% and 1.88% from broken stocks previously mined on 605 level.

The mining licence was one of many consolidated in 2008 by Copper 360 chairperson Shirley Hayes, who has been working for 16 years to get to this point.

Engineering News & Mining Weekly: To what extent does your first ore-mining activity move the needle forward for Copper 360?

Nelson: On our mining right, which covers 19 000 ha, we’ve got 12 historical mines like Reitberg, and 60 prospects, and Reitberg has now shown that the development that has been done for these mines historically can be used. The grades are there, the orebodies are there, and it shows that acceleration of this district can now happen quickly. We’ve got the template. We’ve seen what we need to do at Reitberg, and we can roll out the same model at the rest of the complex. We’ve got a central processing facility, and then we’ve got a cluster mining model, where all these small mines will start producing together, so I think it will move the needle significantly, and it’s going to get us to 80 000 t of copper production in three years’ time.

From what Copper 360 has seen so far, where does the copper endowment of the Northern Cape rank when compared with the copper endowments of South America, notably Chile, and Central Africa, notably the Democratic Republic of Congo?

I think we rank right at the top, and the reason for that is value. Obviously, if you look at Chile, they produce large volumes of copper, and we’re not in that league. But what puts us at the top of that table is that we’ve got very high-grade ores. We’ve got 3%, 4% and 5% copper-bearing material sitting on surface. We’ve got infrastructure. The mines have been predeveloped, and we’re low cost. We’ve got a margin of over 55% For us, it’s all about the margin, and I think it’s the margin that puts us well ahead of any other district in the world. We’ve got pre-developed mines, we’ve got orebodies on surface with 4% and 5% copper. That’s just not heard of anywhere else in the world.

What is Copper 360’s view on the production of clean ‘green’ copper, which for so long has fittingly been referred to as the green metal?

It’s important when it comes to greenness, you are producing your metal at a profit, because you are excavating and taking out ore so you must do it at a profit, not at a loss, because a loss is detrimental to the environment. But I think in terms of the green revolution, copper cannot be replaced and if you want to conduct electricity, you need copper. For developing a better and greener world, electric vehicles, infrastructure, you need copper, and it’s copper that is going to help to transform the world as well, in terms of it being a better place.

Is it economically feasible for Copper 360 to add more value to copper itself prior to on-selling the copper concentrate and what forms could greater beneficiation take?

Our chief operating officer, Gordon Thompson, is working with some of our technical people such as our chief technical officer, Jacolien Wyethe, on what we call the Five Nines Strategic Plan. In the next three years, we intend to build a small smelter, and we ultimately want to make copper wire and pipe and therefore produce copper product, not just ship out the concentrate and the plates. It’s quite feasible to do that, and it adds a lot of value. It’s also good for the South African economy.

How are skills developing at the Copper 360 School of Mining?

That’s going very well. Our programmes keep on rolling out and it’s become our super training centre in the Northern Cape.

What other factors should the market be alerted to when it comes to Copper 360 and its vision?

We’ve had very supportive and patient shareholders. Building mines is a very capital- intensive process. We’ve spent a lot of capital to get where we are with some very patient family, friends, shareholders and institutions and what they can now look forward to is that we’re transitioning from spending capital to now generating cash, becoming extremely cash positive, able to pay a dividend and then fund our growth from internal cash flow, becoming a significant copper producer in Southern Africa.