native copper - tiptoeing around the topic??, page-13

Charlie, let me explain.

AVB have oxidised native copper.
CDU have unweathered native copper.

Here's an analogy. Native copper vs oxidised copper. Iron vs oxidised iron (commonly known as rust). Both are exactly the same, apart from the very thin weathered/oxidised layer on the surface area.

Oxidised copper is a weathered native copper. It is not a new copper mineral in it's own right like chalcopyrite or chalcocite.

Oxidised copper can come in a couple of forms. Most notably, you have the native copper which is coated with a carbonate weathering (green colour), which is very much the type of copper that AVB is dealing with. The copper is native throughout it's cross section, apart from the exposed surface area, where long term geological weathering has occured.

The only difference between the oxidised copper and native copper when it comes to mining, is that you can directly wash and smelt the native copper, while the thin oxidised layer on the copper must be beneficated ('scraping' in laymens terms) and then go through a process of bulk combustion.

When it comes to drilling and defining the product, both oxidised and native copper should be treated in the exact same way, apart from the discrepancy with the surface area weathering (which would only account for a very small portion [1% to no more than 10%] of the volume of the copper nugget itself). Of that weathering mineral, copper makes up about 50%. So at the end of the day, you are only talk about a very small difference in copper composition between oxidised native copper nuggets (AVB), and unweather native copper nuggets (CDU). 95%+ of the nugget is exactly the same thing.

Hope that helps.