Copper Mountain

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The Copper Mountain Project, 100% owned by Copper Mountain Mining Corp is an advanced stage Porphyry copper project 15 km south-west of Princeton in British Colombia, Canada.

Somewhat of a historical site, the area has a long history of exploration and production beginning with initial exploration in the late 1890’s.  Past producers include Newmont Mining Corp, Granby Consolidated Mining and Princeton Mining Corp, giving Copper Mountain valuable existing infrastructure to build on.

Existing infrastructure

“Our restarting of the mine at 35,000 tonnes per day, with a new concentrator means we’re able to utilise the power supply, the water facilities, tailings facility plus shops and a warehouse complex” Jim O’Rourke, CEO and  President and one of the early shareholders says.

“We made a rough guestimate that replacement of the existing infrastructure, if this was a Greenfield project  would be valued at about $300 million. Compared  to other similar sized projects in B.C that would be Greenfield projects, those cost are running in the billion dollar range while ours is only about $435 million because of the existing infrastructure.

“The project is about three hours drive from Vancouver, all on paved highway right up to the mine gate” Rod Shier, CFO says.

“It’s a past producer of about 1.7 billion pounds of copper and it was formally run underground by Granby.  Newmont started the open pit era when they operated it from about ’72 to ’88 as an open pit operation and then Princeton Mining oiperated from 88 to 1996 when the mine shut down.”

“We then became involved as Copper Mountain in 2006 when we acquired the mine  and immediately commenced  with a very extensive exploration program for the next two years” O’Rourke, CEO says.

Super pit potential

Between 2007 and 2008, Copper Mountain completed one of the largest drilling operations in British Colombia – drilling approximately 106,000 metres.

“We combined this information with our historical information so we have over 500,000 metres of drill data on this property” Shier says.

The plan was to test the potential of continuity of mineralization between the three existing pits. Plans for a “super pit” by incorporating  the three pits hung in the balance; if the drilling results came back strong, Copper Mountain would be in prime position to begin working on a truly world-class deposit.

“We’re basically combining the three pits into one large one” O’Rourke explains.

“Our drilling program proved to be very successful. We’ve increased our resource to where we’re at five billion pounds of copper now. The Feasability study confirmed it to be a low risk project.”

“We brought in Mitsubishi Materials in 2008 which provided a strong partner, so we’ve made huge advancements on the property in a very short time. Our current resource has now reached  about five billion pounds of copper.”

“Mitsubishi Materials have three smelters, two major ones in Japan” O’Rourke says.

“Mitsubishi actually treated this concentrate from the time Newmont started it in 1972 to 1996    It was through them that Princeton Mining were encouraged to acquire and develop the Huckleberry Mine (during O’Rourke’s time as CEO of Princeton Mining) a 20,000 tpd open pit copper mine in BC that is still operating today.  I’ve had a long relationship with Mitsubishi and I continue to be their nominee on the board for Huckleberry mines. O’Rourke says”

“We’re developing the company as a copper and precious metals producer, and we’re doing that by bringing this, our soul project, into production at the rate of about 100 million pounds a year with gold and silver credits” Shier explains.

“We’re right on schedule with our original development plans for the Company. We’ve done the initial financing, and became public in 2007, we’re now on the senior board in Toronto and we’ve completed over 100,000 metres of drilling that confirmed the 5 billion pound resource . We’ve completed a positive feasibility study based on our 2007 drilling that showed the economics of the project made sense too” O’Rourke explains.

“Our projected timeline is to start-up in June 2011 with major long lead equipment ordered and construction beginning soon.”

The next step for Copper Mountain

The Copper Mountain Project is in a very enviable position right now.. By most accounts the project appears to be a low risk project for the province. They have an excellent partner in Mitsubishi, making financing risk of the project very manageable, there is excellent infrastructure to build upon, a location used for over 20 years providing a technically low risk site and little environmental risk.

“We’ve got an experienced management team, an excellent project for early development to make the company a mid-tier producer and having blue sky potential of new discoveries too” O’Rourke says.

“It’s a relatively new public company and therefore we have very few shares out – we’ve been very stingy with our shares and we’ll continue to minimize our dilution so in terms of our peers we have  a very low market capitalization. Our story isn’t terribly well known yet because we’ve only been public for two years, but we are at least in our opinion, considerably undervalued compared to our assets.”

Known or not, it’s a great story, but what’s more, it’s a low risk, early development potential project with blue sky exploration potential. Under the watchful eyes of a highly experienced, well-connected, astute and caring team, The Copper Mountain Project targets look to be well within their reach.

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