Cache of Copper

Nothing says “forward looking” more than the sound of heavy machinery or the smell of freshly poured concrete at a mine site. Both are sure signs that all systems are “go” and that a producing mine is just around the corner.

And that’s exactly what’s happening near Princeton, BC, about 300 km east of Vancouver, as Copper Mountain Mining Corporation (75%) and Mitsubishi Materials Corporation (25%) go flat out to get their $438 million Copper Mountain mine ready for production by the middle of next year. About 85%, or almost $370 million, has already been spent on the project.

Slated to produce approximately 100 million tonnes of copper per year by mid-2011, the mine is quickly taking shape and everyone is confident the operation will be ready on schedule and as planned. After all, with a current resource of 5 billion pounds of copper on the 6,702 ha (67 km²) site, there’s plenty of incentive to be on time and ready to go into production as soon as possible.

And, as already mentioned, the Copper Mountain teams are continuing to transform the rugged site into an almost town-like setting complete with crew and administration quarters, but more importantly, construction work is moving ahead rapidly on a host of other vital structures at the site.

Concrete pads for Ball Mill 1 and No. 2 have been poured as have the foundations for the concentrate stock and filtrate tanks. The concentrator building itself is also up and cladded and interior work is proceeding on schedule.

The arrival of grinding mills and other major mill equipment is ongoing and will be installed and tested inside the completed buildings over the next few colder months.

Construction work on a five-bay truck shop building, which is attached to the already-built administration/warehouse building, has been completed and includes an overhead crane for servicing the company’s extensive fleet of vehicles. In fact, with more than $85 million worth of heavy machinery already on site, the well-equipped shop was of particular importance and given high priority on the construction schedule because of the importance of keeping the machines running.

Some of the Copper Mountain’s fleet includes 13 Komatsu 830E haul trucks, two Komatsu PC 8000 hydraulic excavators with 53 yd capacities, and a massive Komatsu front-end loader. All machines will be used in preproduction mining involving a total of 24 million tonnes of material being moved prior to the mill startup in June, 2011. A total of approxi- mately 55 tonnes of material will be moved in a full production year.

Copper Mountain’s own fleet of machines is currently being utilized by

Production

• 1.5 billion pounds of copper

• 450,000 ounces of gold

• 4.5 million ounces of silver

Equipment

• 2 -PC 8000 hydraulic shovels

• 13 -240-ton haul trucks

• 3 -PV 271 rotary drills

• 1 -WA 1200 loader

assisting with construction activities surrounding the installation of an overland conveyor system. The system will eventually move crushed ore from the newly constructed primary crusher to the course ore stockpile located behind the concentrator building.

As mentioned earlier, the Copper Mountain site contains a massive reserve, but in addition to its ore deposits, the site is also desirable because almost all of the property area is accessible by highways, paved access road and local gravel roads remaining from previous mining activity. The concentrate will be trucked to the Port of Vancouver, 300 km from the mill.

Grid power is also available through a 65 MW BC Hydro-fed substation which is sufficient to operate a 35,000 tpd concentrator and related infrastructure. Water is there, too, from the neighbouring Similkameen River to supplement that recycled from the tailings impounded and this permit is still active and sufficient for throughputs.

Again, the NI 43-101 compliant estimation of resources of 5 billion pounds of copper at Copper Mountain is based on composting drill-hole data. An historical exploration database shows the Copper Mountain site contains approximately 6,200 drill-holes, drift sample traverses, and traverses.

A total of 4,695 drill-holes containing 156,396 samples were used during the estimation of resources.

Copper Mountain’s goal is to develop the Copper Mountain Project as a mid-tier copper and precious metal mine to produce about 100 million pounds of copper per year by mid-2011. Operating costs are approximately $1.30 US per pound of copper.

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