the challenge will be to find someone who has the training to turn on the ignition of a truck and back it up to the waste dump. Complex but it gets you near term cash flow.
“We are very excited by the potential acquisition of the El Roble copper project in Chile. This project has the potential to deliver near term production and generate cash flows to fund further exploration activities and enable us to become self-funded within a short time frame,” managing director Zeffron Reeves said.
“Copper mineralisation at El Roble has been mapped over a 6 kilometre strike length with some startling copper grades being mined from small scale mining activities, with regularly shipped grades to local toll plants being in excess of 12% copper and our due diligence work has confirmed this.”
“In addition, the El Roble copper project is close to existing world class producing mines, but it is also within close proximity to transport and processing infrastructure. As a result, this project has the potential to provide near term, high grade copper production with limited capex spend.
“Mining Group’s strategy is to become self-funded through the discovery of economic widths of high grade near surface copper at the El Roble project using modern exploration techniques. If we can succeed in executing our strategy, this project will be transformational to Mining Group.”
El Roble
El Roble covers 6,000 hectares that has been unexplored with modern techniques. It has the potential to provide near term, low CAPEX, high grade copper production.
High grade copper mineralisation occurs within a strike extensive vein system that has had historical production of about 1 million tonnes of ore grading more than 9% copper from four major historic mine areas where the vein width increases with depth.
Orebodies occur as high grade lenses within the vein system, sometimes extending over 100 metres along strike and down dip and having widths up to 12 metres.
Two small underground mines are currently in small scale production at Descobridora and Veta Gruesa, which produce direct smelter copper ore at over 9% copper.
The company’s due diligence indicates that the vein system is strike extensive, well mineralised and has the potential to host further high grade copper orebodies.
It has developed a strategy of becoming self funded through discovery of economic widths of high grade near surface copper using modern exploration techniques.
This would be achieved by finding repeats of thicker sections that were mined historically.
The company noted that high resolution magnetics would be a powerful tool in locating these structures as the copper mineralisation is associated with iron oxides.
It also pointed to regional evidence from Candelaria and Manto Verde that high grade veins could lead to larger deposits while its structural model suggests potential for a large deposit at depth.
In addition, historic surface waste dumps totalling an estimated 500,000 tonnes at between 1% and 2% copper have additional potential for cashflow.
Infrastructure is well developed with the project just 90 kilometres from the mining city of Copiapo while a sealed road is located within 10 kilometres.
In addition, two ENAMI toll treatment copper plants are located within 70 kilometres, offering a possible development option.
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