CopperCo Limited (“CopperCo”) is a public company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (“ASX”) (“CUO”). CopperCo commenced copper production from the first of five ore bodies in October 2007 at the Lady Annie Operations (“LAO”) located approximate 120 km north of Mt Isa. The mine employs the heap leach solvent extraction – electrowinning technology (“SX-EW”) which accounts for approximately 20% of the world’s copper production. Lady Annie is producing at an annualised rate of 19,000 tonnes per annum (“tpa”) of copper cathode and will increase production to 25,000 tpa in the second half of 2008.
CopperCo acquired the Lady Annie tenement package in September 2004 and in the following three years has increased the Mineral Resource by around 300% to 40 million tonnes (“Mt”) @ 0.9% copper (“Cu”) for 358,700 tonnes of contained copper. The Ore Reserve is 16.4Mt at 1.0% for 142,160 tonnes of recovered copper and will be revised in early 2008 to reflect the additional resources defined during 2007.
The Lady Annie treatment plant is located centrally within the tenement package and adjacent to the Mt Kelly area, where the first ore sources, Mt Clarke and Flying Horse are located. The Lady Annie mine is located approximately 20 km to the northwest and is forecast to commence production during 2008.
CopperCo has assembled a coherent major regional tenement package exceeding 2,500 km² within the Mount Isa Block which hosts several known copper oxide and sulphide resources and prospects that continues to yield exciting exploration results. The company has an experienced management team with a track record of successfully discovering, financing, developing and operating mining projects throughout the world.
The three year time period from inception through to production in October 2007, is unprecedented within the Mount Isa district. CopperCo’s Lady Annie Project was also the first new metal mine to come on stream in northwest Queensland in a decade and is only one of a handful within Australia.
CopperCo is committed to building the company through the discovery and acquisition of low cost mining operations.