Shares in Copper 360 soared after it announced it has delivered the first copper concentrate from the Northern Cape in 21 years, marking the start of a new era in copper production in SA.
“We have delivered on plan and at copper concentrate grades that are world-class. Copper 360 is also the only producer of copper cathode from the area,” CEO Jan Nelson said in a statement on Wednesday.
Copper 360 has made history in terms of being the first major copper producer in the Namaqualand region.
“We remain humble, but we celebrate this historic success which marks SA’s return to being a major copper player,” Nelson added.
The group said record concentrate grades in excess of 30% were produced during the commissioning of the MFP 2 — the Nama Copper plant — which was acquired in November 2023 from Mazule Resources for R200m.
The acquisition, Nelson said at the time, would allow the company to more than double its production capacity and output from 3,899 tonnes to 7,975 tonnes per year by 2025.
The plant produced 136 tonnes of concentrate over a commissioning period of three weeks and is forecast to produce in excess of 1,000 tonnes of concentrate per month within three months — two months ahead of planned production, it said.
Copper 360’s second concentrate plant, MFP 1, is planned to start production at the end of July, with a target capacity of 1,400 concentrate tonnes per month.
The SX/EW plant that produces copper cathode, also delivered a record performance in March, producing 60 tonnes of pure copper metal and is well on track to ramp up to 100 tonnes of copper per month within the next quarter, it said.
“Our focus is now to bring our second concentrate plant into production and ramp up copper output. We look forward to reporting further production results in due course,” Nelson said.
In March, the group concluded a new offtake agreement for copper from the Nama Copper plant. The offtake agreement concluded with Fujax UK, an international commodity trading company, is for all concentrate produced by the plant for 10 years.
On March 27, Copper 360 announced it had signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Far West Gold Recoveries (Far West), a subsidiary of DRD Gold, to determine the economic viability of copper dumps which could lead to a joint venture between the companies.
The 12-month MOU will allow Far West to conduct due diligence on Copper 360’s O’Okiep, Carolusberg, and Lower and Upper NamaCopper tailings dams.
“We estimate that there are approximately 50-million to 60-million tonnes of dump material with grades varying between 0.18% and 1.5% copper in the dumps with the potential to contain 450,000 tonnes of copper metal in situ,” Nelson said when announcing the MOU.
If Far West is happy with the results of the assessment of the economic viability of the copper dumps it will enter into a joint venture agreement with Copper 360, including acquiring a 50% interest in the tailings dams at a price to be independently agreed. It will also become the operator of the dumps.
After rising as much as 28% in intraday trade, Copper 360’s share price ended the day up 19.23% at R3.10.
With Denene Erasmus
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