RE: RE: RE: GOOD MOVE TODAY--SEEKING INFOI was also curious about TC/RC and I googled it and found out that it stands for Treatment Charges and Refining Charges. These are costs charged by the refiner (in this case Mitsubishi) to extract the copper from the concentrate produced at the mine.
If you look at page 15 of the Jennings report you will find the charges associated with these costs. In short, the lower the treatment and refining charges, the lower are the total production costs for CUM. At the price set in the MOU, and including the "deduction - 1 unit / tonne" costs, these charges represents nearly $0.29 / pound. At current TC/RC market price these costs would be 12c to 14c lower today as I understand it. Nevertheless, if the total cost / pound of $1,25 estimated by Jennings is realized at the time of production CUM should still have a good margin. If the TC/RC prices go up, which is the case when demand is higher, CUM could even benefit from these fix costs.
On another note, I have also found an article where they specify that TC/RC spot prices are usually a leading indicator of where the copper price will go. I would be really interested to know if there is a website where we can get the evolution of these spot prices.
https://metalsplace.com/news/articles/2622/tcrc-charges-copper-seen-higher-in-2006-lower-after/
So, if the TC/RC prices go up it is because supply of copper concentrate is high and copper should go down. Since Mitsubishi is investing in CUM to secure copper supply and they want to fix the TC/RC price they will charge at a relatively high price, this tells me that they anticipate that copper supply will be low and copper prices will be high. This would be very good for CUM.
Hope this helps.