London Symposium JV Video: Gunnison starts Rio’s Nuton leach at Arizona copper mine

Gunnison Copper (TSX: GCU; OTCQB: GCUMF) produced copper using Rio Tinto’s (NYSE, LSE, ASX: RIO) Nuton sulphide-leaching technology at its Johnson Camp mine in southern Arizona this month, lifting United States copper output without building new smelting capacity.

The open-pit, heap-leach cathode operation started production from run-of-mine oxide material in August, with its first sale in September. Johnson Camp has a 25-million-lb.-per-year nameplate capacity, and Nuton, a Rio Tinto venture, has provided more than $167 million (about C$230 million) in funding through Oct. 31 to support construction and ramp-up.

“We can produce more finished copper in the U.S. and do it in a way that’s extremely clean – less emissions, less water, less power,” senior vice-president and CFO Craig Hallworth told The Miner's Editor-in-Chief Colin McClelland at the International Mining Symposium in London. The technology could help close a looming domestic supply gap by producing cathode more directly, he said.

The company’s main growth lever sits nearby at its larger Gunnison project, where a December 2024 open-pit economic study outlined average annual copper cathode production of about 170 million lb. over an 18-year mine life, with first copper expected by 2030.

The preceding Joint Venture Article is PROMOTED CONTENT sponsored by Gunnison Copper and produced in cooperation with The Northern Miner.