This offtake contract covers 100% of cathodes produced and delivered to Port Hedland, and has an preliminary fastened time period. The sale contract would run from 2026, the earliest doubtless date that Nifty may produce concentrates, the corporate mentioned.
The deal would additionally see Glencore make all affordable efforts to contemplate delivering these concentrates to the Mt Isa smelter, which serves one of many world’s largest mining complexes and the second-largest copper producer in Australia.
Topic to closing agreements, the Swiss-based group will make a A$20 million prepayment on the copper manufacturing to speed up building of a brand new floor mine in addition to present working capital to maneuver the acquisition level to Nifty.
Different points of the partnership embrace an choice for Cyprium to buy sulphuric acid to get rid of uncertainty in provide in addition to technical help from Glencore.
“This industrial partnership provides us certainty of income through the essential startup phases of Nifty’s two processing vegetation, removes uncertainty in sourcing a key enter into cathode manufacturing, and aligns with creating and sustaining a robust Australian job base within the final important mineral, copper,” acknowledged Cyprium’s govt chair Matt Fifield.
Situated on the western fringe of the Nice Sandy Desert within the northeastern Pilbara area, the Nifty mine started operations in 1993 as an open pit oxide copper mine, then transitioned to an underground sulphide mine in 2006.
Between graduation of the oxide operation and November 2019, when the mine was positioned onto care and upkeep, Nifty has produced greater than 700,000 tonnes of copper steel. Cyprium acquired 100% of the Nifty challenge in March 2021 as half of a bigger transaction with Metals X (ASX: MLX).
A useful resource assertion put out earlier this yr estimated a complete useful resource of 125 million tonnes averaging 0.83% copper for 1.04 million tonnes of the steel. A lot of the useful resource is within the indicated class, at 80.9 million tonnes grading 0.79% for 635,765 tonnes of copper.
