The Northern Miner April 15 2019 Issue 8

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GUYANA GOLDFIELDS: NEW MODEL SHRINKS AURORA’S RESERVES 43% / 6 Geotech_Earlug_2016_Alt2.pdf 1 2016-06-24 4:27:20 PM

SPECIAL FOCUS

GLOBAL COPPER

Africa and the Americas offer top prospects / 9–14

DELIVERING QUALITY EXPERTISE GLOBALLY ACROSS THE ENTIRE MINING LIFE CYCLE

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WWW.SGS.COM/MINING

MINERALS@SGS.COM

APRIL 15–28, 2019 / VOL. 105 ISSUE 8 / GLOBAL MINING NEWS · SINCE 1915 / $3.99 / WWW.NORTHERNMINER.COM

First Cobalt produces battery-grade sulphate ONTARIO

| Batch assays 20.8% cobalt BY TRISH SAYWELL tsaywell@northernminer.com

M A bucket wheel excavator at Codelco’s Radomiro Tomic copper mine in Antofagasta, Chile.  CODELCO

Deficits delayed in global copper market CESCO WEEK

BY TOM AZZOPARDI Special to The Northern Miner SANTIAGO, CHILE

M

ention electric vehicles and copper industry executives’ eyes dazzle like the headlights on a Tesla. As electric motors and lithium batteries replace combustion engines, cars, buses and trucks are all going to contain a lot more copper.

| The future looks bright for copper, but it’s not here yet This is good news for attendees at CESCO Week, the copper industry’s annual get together in Santiago. For them, coal mining is consigned to the trash heap — their kind of mining will save humanity. Forget global warming, the real issue is clean air, said Robert Friedland, Ivanhoe Mines’ (TSX: IVN; US-OTC: IVPAF) evangelical executive co-chairman, who sweated in his suite rather than

Anglo American’s Quellaveco copper project in Moquegua region, Peru.   ANGLO AMERICAN

breathe in the Chilean capital’s toxic fumes. The revolution is coming, but slowly. Smoggy Santiago now has 200 Chinese-built electric buses on its roads, but it is expected to take years to replace the other 5,000. The volume of copper required is huge. By 2025, electric vehicles and associated infrastructure are expected to require another 2.5 million tonnes annually of cop-

per by the end of the next decade, rising to 5 million tonnes by 2035. The need is even greater given the decrepit state of many copper mines. Output from existing mines is estimated to fall over 25% to 15 million tonnes by 2030. Some have projects lined up to keep them in production for decades to come, such as Rio Tinto (NYSE: RIO; LON: RIO), which plans to begin underground mining at Bingham Canyon in Utah, or Codelco’s project to develop sulphide resources underneath its Radomiro Tomic pit in Chile. But for others, like Glencore’s (LON: GLEN) Mt Isa mine in northeast Australia, their time is finally up. So the industry remains heavily dependent on mines coming into production to meet burgeoning demand. While these projects exist, there is considerable uncertainty about how long it will take to develop them. Many are still at an early stage of development or face serious environmental and engineering challenges. The proposed Pebble copper-gold mine in Alaska has been in permitting for over a decade and is the subject of intense opposition by environmental groups.

ost refined cobalt used in the electric vehicle market is produced in Asia, but First Cobalt (TSXV: FCC; US-OTC FTSSF) intends to start refining the metal into battery-grade cobalt sulphate at its refinery in Ontario, after positive test results at SGS’s lab in Lakefield that replicated the refinery’s circuits and flowsheet. The product, refined in a single batch in the lab, assayed 20.8% cobalt, surpassing the reference grade for sulphate pricing and paving the way for First Cobalt to bring its refinery out of care and maintenance, and into production. Once in production, the refinery would be the only producer of refined cobalt in North America. See FIRST COBALT / 2 PM40069240

See COPPER OUTLOOK / 2

SCRAPBOOK: YMP AWARDS GALA IN TORONTO / 5

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