Page 38 - pd294-June21-mag-web_Neat

coPPeR sPotLIGHt

Cyprium to open pit Nifty

arry Cahill is enjoying a honeymoon open, 100-150m wide and on the sul- source at Nifty is 658,000t copper.
Bperiod with Cyprium Metals Ltd at Nif- phide part of it we have drilled down to Infrastructure still in place at Nifty in-
ty in Western Australia’s Paterson Prov- 300m and it is still delivering,” Cahill said. cludes a 2.8 mtpa sulphide concentrator,
ince. Nanadie Well – 75km east-north-east 25,000 tpa copper cathode heap leach
Cahill, formerly at the helm of Indo- of Cyprium’s Hollandaire copper deposit SX/EW facility, 21MW gas turbine power
nesia-focused copper producer Finders – was subject to a 3,500m Phase 1 RC station, sufficient water supplies and ac-
Resources before the company’s takeo- drilling programme, with results to date commodation facilities suitable for 400
ver in 2018, told Paydirt completion of revealing extensive, shallow copper and people.
the acquisition of Metals X Ltd’s Paterson gold mineralisation. An all-weather airstrip is also in place
copper portfolio in March was timely. A resource at Nanadie Well will be in- at Nifty where Cyprium’s longer-term am-
The $60 million deal – including $24 cluded in Cyprium’s Murchison copper- bition is to revisit mining studies to rede-
million in cash to Metals X – has pre- gold scoping study planned for this year. sign the underground mine plan.
sented Cyprium the chance to return “We have the oxide resource at Nan- In the meantime, Cahill said, the idea
Nifty to past glories, leveraging it to a adie Well and we can use the excess was to turn Nifty into an open pit and de-
project boasting contained copper ox- acid from Hollandaire to free the copper liver profits comparable to past owners.
ide and sulphide resources of 486,000t from Nanadie Well. After drilling some “Metals X did a scoping study on an
at Maroochydore. Meanwhile, IGO Ltd deeper holes and doing some geophys- open pit scenario which suggested it
is farming in to the Paterson exploration ics we have found it is much bigger than would be profitable. There is a resource
project by sole funding $32 million worth we gave it credit for. We knew it was a there with over 600,000t copper metal
of exploration activities over 6.5 years for reasonable size and had more potential and we plan to dig and mine an open pit
a 70% stake. other than just that top zone of oxide ma- with 20,000 tpa copper for 20 years. That
IGO has yet to begin its expenditure terial,” Cahill said. is the angle we are coming from and cop-
commitment, however, it must spend a The outlook Cahill has is for Nanadie to per prices have done the right thing by us
minimum $11 million over 3.5 years be- produce in the vicinity of 20,000 tpa cop- by absolutely taking off,” Cahill said.
fore withdrawing. per metal plate to complement the same “When you buy a project, you look at
Exposure to IGO’s exploration heft is output from Maroochydore and Nifty. the downside risks, as well as the upside,
beneficial but Cahill, Cyprium’s executive “There is a lot of hard work ahead, but and in terms of the downside risks there
director, pointed out the company was we anticipate we will be producing cop- is nothing that we have seen that has
producing good results in its own right at per at Nifty by the end of 2022. That is been any worse than we have thought.
Nanadie Well in the Murchison. a quick turnaround to production we are On the positive side, it looks like some of
“It is our little sleeper. It is starting to aiming for and we expect full production the things that we thought we’d see ap-
show that slowly but surely the deposit by January 2023,” Cahill said. pear better than we first thought. It is a bit
is a much larger system than anyone Nifty has been on care-and-mainte- of a honeymoon period of sorts, and it is
gave it credit for. Besides the fact that we nance since late 2019 and Cyprium will all looking pretty good for us.”
are getting that higher grade concentra- look to revive the asset via an open pit/
tion [8-10% copper with reasonable gold heap leach strategy while adding oxide – Mark Andrews
grades] in the oxide zone, we are see- resources to extend mine life.
ing that the system is 750m long and still The open pit and underground re-

Cyprium raised $90 million to fund its
acquisition of Metals X’s Paterson copper
portfolio. The company has about $50
million left to help revive the Nifty asset and
embark on a long stay in the province

Page 38 JUNe 2021 aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT