Vancouver — A limited partnership that Taseko Mines (TKO-V) has an exclusive right to acquire has raised $1.85 million to determine the economic viability of a new technology aimed at reviving the dormant Gibraltar copper mine in British Columbia.
The Hunter Dickinson-led junior sold 1,850 limited partnership units of Gibraltar Engineering Services (GESL) at a price of $1,000 per unit. The proceeds will be used for final testwork, engineering and feasibility of applying the hydrometallurgical technology developed to extract pure copper from concentrates in a refinery to be built at the Gibraltar mine near Williams Lake. Taseko has a right to acquire the partnership business for $2.17 million based on a premium over the feasibility costs incurred.
In August, 2000, a scoping study concluded that the proposed hydrometallurgical refinery would result in a 22% reduction in copper production costs by eliminating the cost of transporting concentrate to offshore processing locations, reducing smelter charges and the achievement of greater mine site efficiencies.
Taseko believes that, under these operating conditions, production could continue for a minimum of 12 years. Mine start-up and refinery construction costs are currently estimated to be $120 million. A feasibility report is expected shortly.
Taseko acquired the 35,000-tonne-per-day, mine-and-mill facility in 1999, with a view to examining its potential for producing copper cathode from concentrates using an innovative hydrometallurgical process developed by CESL, a division of Teck Cominco (TEK-T).
Gibraltar was a large-scale, 37,000-tonne-per-day open pit and milling operation with an accompanying solvent extraction-electrowinning (SX-EW) circuit. Boliden (BLS-T) acquired the mine when it took over Westmin Resources in early 1998, and then suspended operations as a result of high operating costs in a weak copper market and ongoing capital requirements.
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