Post by
templetooth2 on Sep 11, 2024 11:49pm
Size matters
I keep hearing how this orebody is going to attract the interest of a "major". I don't see it.
Over a year ago, Michael Gentile opined the Kay deposit would be 20 million tonnes or tons at 3% Cu.
That is 1,320,000,000 million pounds of contained copper. If they mine this over 12 years, at 100% recovery, that is 110 million pounds per year. Smaller than Gibraltar which I think is ballpark 125-130 million per year. In gold equivalent terms, about 183,000 annual ounces. A junior company can do very nicely for itself at that level of production. Newmont is trying to offload a bunch of comparable sized projects as non-core.
There is no major knight in shining armour coming to dump a bunch of cash in your lap.
Numbers haven't been firmed up entirely, but Arizona Sonoran is a 170,000,000 million pounds per year, probably in production by early 2028. And it is CHEAPER than AMC which probably won't see production until 2030.