Hot Chili upbeat about PFS for Chile’s next large coastal copper mine

PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The Productora copper project, in Chile, would cost $725-million to develop and could deliver an average 66 000 t/y of copper and 25 000 oz/y of gold over the first eight years of a ten-year mine life, the results of a prefeasibility study (PFS) have shown.

ASX-listed Hot Chili on Wednesday told shareholders that the PFS centered around the openpit mining of Productora through two large sulphide openpits and five smaller oxide openpits. The mine would use a 14-million-tonne-a-year sulphide concentrator and a 3.3-million-tonne-a-year heap-leach and solvent-exchange and electrowinning circuit.

The PFS projected that the operation could generate revenue of about $4.3-billion, based on long-term price outlooks, while C1 cash cost estimates have come in at $1.47/lb.

The mine was expected to have a post tax net present value of $220-million and an internal rate of return of 15%, assuming a long-term price deck of $3/lb copper, $1 250/oz gold and $14/lb molybdenum.

During the PFS, Hot Chili nearly doubled the ore reserve tonnage at the Productora project, to 166.9-million tonnes, with payable metals estimated at 562 900 t of copper, 191 900 oz of gold and 11 200 t of molybdenum.

The project’s resource base was reported at 1.47-million tonnes of copper, 980 000 oz of gold and 45 000 t of molybdenum.

“The PFS demonstrates a robust blueprint to develop one of Chile’s next large-scale coastal copper mines,” the company told shareholders.

“Financial benchmarking against some of the world’s leading copper developments indicates Productora is a stand-out for capital intensity, with competitive return on investment and cash costs when compared with existing long-life, large scale global copper producers.”

Hot Chili was assessing various leverage opportunities in advance of planning the start of a definitive feasibility study. These opportunities including extending the mine life and improving operating costs by studying an owner-operator mining scenario.