Sorry Nikec, no I don't think so. The intent was always to...

Sorry Nikec, no I don't think so. The intent was always to resume mining and they're exploring options maintain utilisation now that they're up against the wall. Buying straight ore is creative, and perhaps attractive to a start-up miner but I'm incredulous about their prospects. I personally don't have a problem if they buy ore to treat at any grade, as long as the effective ASIC stays below $2/lb.

Also, 4% grades is world's best exceptional, and 1.2% is very good. Most large mines have sub 1% ore.

At present, the global average copper ore grades for copper mines is approximately 0.62% of Cu content [17] and this number is expected to decrease as mines with higher ore grades become exhausted [17,18,19]. Starting from this information, the concern over the future availability of copper is on the rise, and several studies have focused on estimating the global copper peak production using Hubbert’s model, which has been estimated to be between 8 and 40 years from now [16,20,21,22,23,24].

http://www.mdpi.com/2079-9276/5/4/36/htm