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The Isa's copper ladies
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Tuesday, December 04, 2007

WHILE Xstrata's operations might dominate the landscape around the city of Mount Isa, there are numerous other mines in the area, and while they may not be as big, they do contribute significantly to the region's resources output. Alex Forrest reports

One of those is nearly as big as Xstrata's Mt Isa Mines in terms of revenue. Zinifex's Century Mine is 250km north-northwest of Mount Isa, and in a survey by Australia's Mining Monthly magazine was ranked as Australia's second richest mine based on metal prices at December 2006.

In that same survey, BHP Billiton's Cannington silver and lead mine, which is 250km south-southeast of Mount Isa town, came in as Australia's 17th richest mine.

But for some miners in the region, operations are just getting underway and one of those is Perth-based CopperCo, whose flagship Lady Annie copper project began mining operations in June 2007. The first copper cathode from the project was produced in October.

Located 137km northwest of Mount Isa, CopperCo says the project encompasses oxide copper reserves of 142,600t tonnes and sulphide resources of 33.1 million tonnes grading at 0.8% copper, corresponding to 294,000t of copper.

"We set out to put together a copper company, and in late 2003, we looked around Australia for an asset, or a selection of assets," CopperCo managing director Brian Rear told MiningNewPremium.net.

"We wanted an asset that was capable of near-term production, so when we identified Lady Annie as the ore body that we thought had the best attributes for what we wanted to do, we then looked at who owned the ground around it," Rear said.

"We managed to close the deals around that over the next 12 months, so by late 2004 we'd done all the deals and away we went."

Lady Annie consists of five main ore bodies, which are expected to result in an eight-year mine life. Initial production was at 19,000 tonnes per annum, but Rear said he expects to ramp that up to 30,000tpa by mid-2008.

"We think the tenement block is good for 50,000tpa, something like that," Rear said.

He said one of the project's biggest challenges was the timeframes CopperCo set to get into production, but that was not the only issue.

"Equipment delivery, availability of people and permitting, I think they're the three things that everyone's struggling with right now; but having said that, we got on the ground in January this year and produced copper in early October.

"We shouldn't be complaining really."

"We sell our cathodes to Glencore and it goes out every day to Mount Isa, then it goes down to Townsville, so when we started producing, we had to fill up that logistics pipeline. Now that's stable, it's fine and we invoice every week."

Last Thursday, CopperCo announced its Lady Brenda prospect, 250m southwest of Lady Annie, had an inferred resource of 1.9Mt at 0.6% copper, which equated to 10,500t of contained copper metal.

So as of last week, the total Lady Annie Project mineral resource inventory (including Lady Annie East, Lady Annie West and Lady Brenda) stands at 36.1Mt of ore grading at 0.9% copper for 315,000t of metal.

Rear said that although the whole operation is expected to yield around $1 billion in revenue at current copper prices, that amount would increase when CopperCo's plans for expansion are factored into a new mine plan next year.