Cyprium Metals (ASX: CYM) first half progresses Nifty restart strategy

Highlights

• Cyprium Metals’ key priority is to restart operations at Nifty copper project.
• The company plans to undertake the development of a large-scale open pit mine.
• The company is engaged in finalising a technical study to undertake a detailed life of mine study.
• The plan is to have annual copper production of 48K-65K tonnes.

Australian copper-focused company Cyprium Metals Limited (ASX: CYM) marked significant developments during the first half of FY23, advancing its efforts to a new chapter for its Nifty copper project.

During the period, the company announced a capital raise of around AU$29 million (before costs) through a placement and an entitlement offer to support the Nifty restart strategy.  

Nifty Copper Project Restart Study

Following the completion of the project restart study, the company is progressing with below activities:

• Expansion of the mineral resource inventory to more than 1.6MT of contained copper.
• Necessary approvals for restarting the project.
• To improve restart study robustness, further metallurgical optimisation testwork
• Operational readiness activities, site clean-up, infrastructure upgrades and pre-development refurbishments at the project

Details of Nifty strategy

The company aims to restart Nifty operations with the development of a large-scale open pit mine by employing extensive sunk capital infrastructure.

The plan is focused on copper oxide heap leach SX-EW starter open pit operation to be complemented by sulphide open pit. This is anticipated to offer a mine life of more than 15 years based on +90,000 tonne contained copper mineral resources.

The company informed that it is refreshing the cost inputs and is simultaneously working on a technical study.

Data source: company update

Infrastructure is already in place at Nifty to treat both sulphide and oxide mineral inventory.

What is expected from Nifty operations?

The Nifty strategy is anticipated to deliver a long-life production profile with two outputs, expected to offer maximum processing flexibility and a lower-risk operating approach.

As per the plan, the expected annualised copper production would be 48,000 to 65,000 tpa. The expected copper cathode production from the Oxide Heap Leach SX-EW operation is nearly 20,000 – 25,000 tpa for over six years.

The Oxide leach SX-EW project is anticipated to deliver funding for Sulphide concentrator restart which is in turn is anticipated to deliver production in the range of 28,000 tpa to 40,000 tpa of copper in concentrate.