About World Copper Ltd
Zonia is in the Walnut Grove Mining District, Yavapai County, Arizona, and consists of 261 patented (96) and unpatented (185) mineral claims, and 566.85 acres of surface rights acquired from the State of Arizona, all totaling 4,279.55 acres. It is a near-surface, copper-oxide resource and a brownfields site having already been mined in the late 1960s and ’70s. The project has been significantly de-risked with over 50,000 metres of drilling completed to date and with substantial amounts of detailed engineering completed. The PEA based on the Historical Resource Estimate indicated that the project could be advanced utilizing low-cost open pit mining and heap leach with SX-EW processing to produce pure copper cathode. The property has been drill-tested with almost 700 drill holes (60,000 meters). This high-density drilling covers 30% of the property and defines the current resource estimate, reducing technical risk on the deposit. Mineralization is mostly open to the northeast, providing considerable opportunity to grow the resource.
The March, 2018 Preliminary Economic Assessment on the Zonia copper-oxide deposit concludes that the economics of the project are excellent and gives World Copper the assurance to advance the project through feasibility. The base case used a $2.00/lb designed pit shell with a grade cut-off of 0.17% total copper. At a copper price of $3.00/lb the economics are:
- After-tax NPV(8%) and IRR of $177 M and 29 %, respectively, with a 2.9 year payback of initial capital
- Initial capital of $198 M
- Cumulative Net Cash Flow After Taxes of $331 million
- Life Of Mine of 9 years
The majority of the mineralized area was pre-stripped during previous open-pit mining operations at Zonia in 1966, as 17 million tons were mined with 7 million tons stacked on heap leach pads, producing cement copper up till 1975. Therefore, as described in the PEA, the strip ratio is a low 1:1. Furthermore, the PEA outlines a mine plan and development strategy entirely on private land, which significantly reduces the timeline for permitting.
In March 2023, the company announced an update mineral resource estimate, significantly expanding the historic resource to:
- Indicated Resources of 75.7 M short tons grading 0.30% total copper containing 450.5 M lbs of copper; and
- Inferred Resources of 122.0 M short tons grading 0.24% total copper containing 575.4 M lbs of copper.
In addition to the established resource, the Zonia land position contains a copper-molybdenum geochemical anomaly (associated with depressed manganese values) that is similar in intensity and scale (1000 by 1500 metres) to the main resource, and within the same prospective geology. This anomaly is located two kilometres northeast of the resource and represents a high-priority copper-oxide porphyry exploration drill target.
Building from the resource expansion from the Updated Resource Estimate, the next step and largest potential for a new discovery at Zonia is to the north-northeast of the current open pit and resource, where a large (2.5 x 1.5 kilometres) coincident copper-molybdenum-manganese geochemical anomaly has been identified (Zonia Norte; Figure 2). Historical surface rock geochemical sampling has delineated a copper-molybdenum anomaly that is spatially coincident and similar in size/shape with a broad zone of manganese depletion consistent with typical porphyry-copper mineralization. This anomaly is situated 1.5 kilometres to the north-northeast of the Zonia deposit, which exhibits the same pattern of geochemical anomalism and is comparable in size to the northeast target. It is significant that the anomaly is open to the north where outcrops are covered by post-mineral cover. This large geochemical footprint is interpreted to represent a second porphyry centre. Nearby historical drill holes indicate the area is deeply weathered and copper-oxide mineralization is present.
To learn more about World Copper Ltd., go to https://worldcopperltd.com/