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Vale is considering reappointing Eduardo Bartolomeo for a second term as CEO with a shorter duration.

According to Valor Econômico, this is one of the alternatives being considered in ongoing discussions regarding the succession at the mining giant, involving shareholders and the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

As the Brazilian newspaper reported, the federal government is attempting to place former Brazilian Minister of Finance Guido Mantega as a Vale executive director.

The current term of Bartolomeo is three years, and there is a possibility of renewal for a shorter period.

The federal government is said to have agreed to the “abbreviated” extension of the current term, with the “counterpart” being Mantega taking the seat at Previ, the pension fund for Banco do Brasil employees and a Vale shareholder, on the company’s board of directors.

A board meeting at Vale is scheduled for January 31.

According to the company’s governance rules, Bartolomeo must be informed whether he will remain in the position four months before the contract expires at the end of May.

This means that the board needs to make the announcement by the end of January.

Executive Luis Henrique Guimarães from the producer of bioethanol, sugar, and energy Cosan Group is also among those considered to take over leadership of the mining company.

His name is supported by Rubens Ometto, owner of Cosan, which acquired a stake of around 5% in Vale in 2022.

Still, according to Valor Econômico, Mantega’s name continues to carry weight among federal government leaders.

In addition to Cosan, Vale has shareholders such as Black Rock and Capital, and Previ. Mitsui and Bradespar, the investment arm of the Brazilian bank Bradesco, are also shareholders.

According to Valor Econômico, the federal government seeks to approach large companies that have a decarbonization agenda, as is the case with Vale.

Vale has been discussing potential green hydrogen projects with Petrobras and is also in talks with the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) to create an investment fund to finance critical mineral projects.

Read More: Vale’s $10 billion spend on Canada targets existing potential

Chilean miner Antofagasta (LON: ANTO) on Wednesday reported a 2% increase in annual copper production last year to 660,600 tonnes thanks to strong performances by its largest mines, Los Pelambres and Centinela.

The company, which operates four copper mines in Chile, said output at Los Pelambres increased after overcoming water supply issues at the operation, which is in the midst of a multi-billion dollar expansion.

Water is needed in copper smelting, and in the concentrator, which breaks down raw ore and processes it into usable material.

Chief executive Iván Arriagada said the company is finalizing the delivery of the Phase 1 expansion project at Los Pelambres, which will help to maintain the asset’s future production. 

Arriagada highlighted the recent approval of a second concentrator at Centinela, which will provide an additional 170,000 copper-equivalent tonnes of production.

He also mentioned the acquisition of a 19% interest in Peruvian copper producer Buenaventura (NYSE: BVN), which has seven mines in the home country. The precious and base metals producer also holds a 19.58% interest in Cerro Verde, one of the world’s largest copper mines, in a partnership with Freeport-McMorRan and Sumitomo.

Antofagasta, majority-owned by Chile’s Luksic family, one of the country’s wealthiest, kept its full year production forecast for 2024 unchanged. It expects to produce 670,000-710,000 tonnes of copper and 195,000-210,000 gold ounces this year. That compares to 660,000 tonnes of copper in 2023, reflecting a successful planned increase in production.

Copper prices continued to show stability last year and Antofagasta expects that given the metal’s fundamental role in the energy transition and electrification, prices will remain solid in the long-term.

Analysts at BMO Capital Markets concur. “We believe that improving copper markets over the next few years and the highest production growth in our coverage will allow for EBITDA to double,” they wrote in a note.

Estimates predict a shortage of the metal starting this year as some factors have reduced the available supply. Panama shut down First Quantum’s (TSX: FM) mine, which produces 350,000 tonnes of copper, and two major producers, Anglo American (LON: AAL) and Vale Base Metals (NYSE: VALE) cut their output estimates for 2024 and 2025.

New research out of ETH Zurich suggests that certain features of the tailings dam at Vale’s Corrego do Feijao iron ore mine in Brumadinho, southeastern Brazil, may have been the cause of the burst that released 10 million cubic metres of liquefied tailings, destroyed neighbouring settlements, took a railway bridge with it and killed at least 270 people.

In a paper published in the journal Communications of Earth and Environment, the scientists deal with the uncertainty that remained as to why the dam broke in 2019 specifically – three years after the pond was last loaded with new tailings, and why no significant displacements had been detected before the collapse.

The article explains that the tailings pond was built in 1976. Over the following years, its earth dam was raised several times by a few metres, as is customary in ore mining, to create additional space for the storage of residues. The dam’s steps were placed with an offset on top of each other, much like the steps of a staircase. Ultimately, the dam consisted of 10 steps and was 86 metres tall.

When the structure failed, the initial rupture occurred at the second dam level. As a result, all 10 steps of the earth dam collapsed and, together with the liquefied accumulated tailings, ran out down into the valley as a mudslide.

According to the new findings, some initial slip surfaces had already appeared at the height of the second step as the dam was being built. With the progress of construction, these slip surfaces increased in length but remained too short to cause a collapse. However, after the tailings dam was decommissioned in 2016, these surfaces continued to expand horizontally and eventually reached a critical length. As a result, the layers of tailings began to move, causing the dam to burst under their weight.

The numerical and analytical models employed by the researchers show that what caused the slip surface to grow is known as creep deformation. These deformations in the fine-grained, brittle tailings are tiny, slowly accumulating displacements caused by uneven pressure distribution between the grains in the overlying deposits. 

“Other triggers such as rainfall and drilling can accelerate slip surface growth,” head researcher Alexander Puzrin said in a media statement. “But our model shows that creep deformation alone is sufficient for the slip surface to reach the critical extent that can trigger a dam failure.”

In Puzrin’s view, the findings are worrying in two respects: the slip surface that caused the disaster apparently grew at a time when the pond was no longer being loaded with new tailings – in other words, without any additional external load – and the growth of the slip surface did not lead to any significant external deformation of the dam that the monitoring system could have recognized as alarming.

The ETH study also shows that no longer loading a pond with new tailings may not avert the danger, as expected by the Brazilian government with its decision to decommission upstream tailings dams following the Brumadinho disaster.

The paper, however, opens up new options. 

“Our model can carry out a risk analysis for existing dams and predict the likelihood of a dam failure,” Puzrin said. 

The expert pointed out that the risk can be reduced by pumping the water from the boreholes in the tailings ponds. Or the tailings dam can be dismantled. In urgent cases, endangered villages can be temporarily evacuated to protect the inhabitants until the danger has been averted.

“Our findings provide an indication of how to further improve the safety of earth dams in the event of an earthquake, which can generate an initial slip surface. In this respect, our work helps to make dams safer in general,” the researcher said.

Albemarle (NYSE: ALB) said on Wednesday it would cut jobs and defer spending on projects, including a massive refinery project in South Carolina, as part of a wide-ranging plan to slash costs in light of falling lithium prices.

The world’s top producer of the battery metal said it plans to spend $1.6 billion to $1.8  billion in 2024, down from about $2.1 billion it invested last year.

“The actions we are taking allow us to advance near-term growth and preserve future opportunities as we navigate the dynamics of our key end-markets,” chief executive Kent Masters said in the statement. “The long-term fundamentals for our business are strong and we remain committed to operating in a safe and sustainable manner.”  

The US-based lithium producer noted it would finish the commissioning of several lithium refineries in China and Australia, which are almost fully built. The company also said it would focused on securing the necessary permits to reopen its Kings Mountain lithium mine in North Carolina.

The asset contains one of the few known hard rock lithium deposits in the US. According to Albemarle, the operation would feed sufficient material for 50 kt LCE of conversion capacity and support the manufacturing about 1.2 million electric vehicles a year initially.

In all, Albemarle expects to save $95 million annually with the measures announced today, of which $50 million will come this year.

The number of people expected to be laid off because of these measures was not disclosed. 

Supply of the battery metal over the past year outpaced demand, causing an oversupply that caused a collapse in prices last year.

While lithium prices vary by region and type, most indexes, including the one tracked by Fastmarkets and Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, have dropped by more than 80% over the past year. 

Experts expect prices for the lightweight material, key for making the batteries that power EVs and high-tech devices, to keep dropping.

Lithium carbonate fell by 1.05% on Wednesday on the Shangai Metals Market,  closing at 103,800 yuan per tonne or about $14,556 per tonne. This represents a nearly 11% price plunge over the past month alone.

The lithium giant is also seeking to sell its stake in Australia’s Liontown Resources (ASX: LTR) after billionaire Gina Rinehart’s company Hancock Prospecting blocked in October its A$6.6 billion ($4.3bn at today’s rates) takeover bid.

Albemarle has priced the roughly 96 million shares it holds in the Australian lithium developer at around A$121 million in a block trade run by JPMorgan, a term sheet showed on Wednesday.

The offer price of A$1.26 to A$1.32 per share is a discount of 7.4%-2.9% to Liontown’s last traded price of A$1.36 on Wednesday. Shares had closed as high as A$3 in the days prior to Albemarle’s bid withdrawal.

Perth-based Liontown confirmed Albemarle’s intentions to local media.  The company owns one of the most promising early-stage lithium projects in Australia, Kathleen Valley, located 680 km north-east of Perth in Western Australia’s premier mining district.

Kathleen Valley is considered one of the world’s largest and highest-grade hard rock lithium deposits with a mineral resource estimated at 156 million tonnes at 1.4% lithium oxide and 130ppm tantalum oxide.

The project, on track to begin commercial production in mid-2024, is forecast to initially produce around 500,000 tonnes a year of spodumene concentrate expanding to 700,000 tonnes annually in six years.

Liontown already has supply agreements with Tesla and Ford Motor, as well as with South Korean-based LG Energy Solution.

Hancock Prospecting is now the lithium junior’s largest shareholder with a 19.9% stake. 

Rinehart owns shares in other lithium producers such as Patriot Battery Metals (ASX, TSX: PMT) and Delta Lithium (ASX: DLI), but the main focus of her investment is iron ore.

A range of sustainability and ESG forces will shape the business of mining in 2024, building on the trends of 2023, a year characterized by a surge in investor scrutiny, regulatory action, and a significant uptick in mining sustainability performance expectations.

Against the backdrop of continued geopolitical and inflationary pressures, 2023 saw some ESG backlash influence investor narratives in certain jurisdictions, though less so their practices. ESG took the top spot again in key mining industry risk reports, while community protests and governance issues made news in regions worldwide, many based on ESG issues. Globally, we saw a growing entrenchment of ESG and corporate sustainability principles in expectations of how the industry conducts its business.

For 2024, the World Economic Forum’s managing director has forecasted “an unstable global order characterized by polarizing narratives and insecurity, the worsening impacts of extreme weather, and economic uncertainty.” This sets the stage for what promises to be an unpredictable year, with environmental and social issues remaining a core focus. We know that spotting trends to inform strategic action can be challenging, so here are our top 10 mining ESG trends that mining companies should take note of and take action on in 2024.

1. Net-Zero Acceleration. Climate change risk and decarbonization are likely to remain a key focus in 2024. Net-zero commitments are becoming a standard expectation, and industry leaders are moving from covering only scope 1 and 2, to also include scope 3. According to Net Zero Tracker, half of the world’s largest companies have now adopted net zero targets, though doubts remain about how attainable they are. Investors will increasingly pressure companies to demonstrate adequate and credible climate plans.
2. Beyond Carbon: Biodiversity Rising. With incontrovertible evidence of the vicious circle that interlocks climate change and nature loss, biodiversity is now a rapidly rising topic. This shift is driven by a growing awareness of the scope of crisis before us and the associated material risks to business and society. The year will see leading companies begin to align with the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) recommendations, which aim to integrate nature into financial decision-making and disclosure.  
3. Tailings Management A Critical Focus. Tailings management, having entrenched its position in the investor spotlight in 2023, will remain a key focus. After ICMM members’ first disclosure on alignment with the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (GISTM) last year, there will be escalating pressure on the rest of the industry to follow suit, with the new Global Tailings Management Institute (GTMI) spearheading enforcement, assurance, and oversight. Rapid commercialization of a range of technological advancements will help companies move towards more responsible management, too.
4. Practical EDI Gaining Ground. Mirroring a global shift towards workplace inclusivity, the mining sector will make further progress on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI, or DEI) initiatives in 2024. The new TSM Equitable, Diverse, and Inclusive Workplaces Protocol and ICMM member DEI position statement and commitment have spurred renewed focus and action, as the industry acknowledges the need for greater efforts to tackle its ongoing workforce and talent management challenges.
5. Standardization of ESG Reporting for Capital Markets. The widespread adoption of the IFRS Foundation’s new disclosure standards will transform voluntary sustainability reporting in 2024. The IFRS has now taken over responsibility for the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), both well-known by investors. The new, single, global baseline of sustainability disclosures designed for capital markets will rapidly become the global reference for ESG disclosure, expected to bring much-needed consistency and comparability.
6. Global Regulations Require Adaptation. A wave of new and updated sustainability regulations is sweeping across the globe, and mining will face the challenge of adapting to new regulatory requirements across various jurisdictions, especially those linked to the EU. High-profile emerging mandatory regulations include disclosure on climate change and modern slavery in multiple jurisdictions and broad standardized non-financial reporting in the EU. Meanwhile, at least 64 jurisdictions are analyzing how to integrate the IFRS Foundation disclosure standards in their regulations. 
7. Surging Investor Demands and Shareholder Activism. Echoing global public sentiment, investors will continue to ramp up pressure for robust ESG performance and transparency. A 2023 KPMG survey found that over half of M&A dealmakers have cancelled deals due to material findings of an ESG due diligence process. And headlines such as Glencore’s climate plan being rejected by investors, attempts to sue Shell directors personally for climate risk mismanagement, and the Global Investor Mining Commission on Mining 2030 announcing strong support from investors with US$11 trillion in assets under management signal a clear trend. Meanwhile, a recent proxy firm policy survey shows the “double materiality” debate continues, but climate-related risk disclosure will be central to investor demands and shareholder activism. TCFD alignment is becoming a standard expectation in the face of increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events worldwide.
8.  Growing Executive and Board Competency Risk. Surveys from PwC, BCG, and the INSEAD Corporate Governance Centre during 2023 found that only 27-47% of board directors understand ESG risks and have sufficient ESG competence, on topics ranging from climate change to human rights and EDI. Such findings expose a growing disconnect between evolving investor expectations of fiduciary duty and oversight, and the ESG capabilities of directors and company leaders. ESG upskilling to ensure effective management and governance is expected to be a priority for many companies in the year ahead.
9. Technological Innovation Enabling Performance and Assessment. Technological innovations are likely to play a key role in advancing sustainability priorities. Current commercialization of relevant technologies ranges from the use of AI and data analytics to assess and oversee ESG performance, manage cybersecurity risks, and support health and safety outcomes, to innovative solutions for resource optimization and tailings management (e.g. biomining, bioremediation, waste-to-value, satellite and other real-time monitoring). Along with innovations in materials movement and renewable energy solutions including hydrogen and solar, we are likely to see more rapid innovation foster improved sustainability outcomes and assessment.
10. Focus on Sustainable and Responsible Supply Chains. Many companies mapping their supply chains in response to pressure to do so, are struggling immensely. Yet further progress in responsible sourcing and supply chain transparency is likely, given regulatory trends and amplified investor expectations to focus on sustainability across the entire value chain. This year will see many companies venture into understanding their Scope 3 emissions and human rights risks especially.

As the work and disclosure of sustainability continue to mature, rumblings of ESG fatigue and discontent continue too, with some starting to favour the language of “responsible business” instead.  Either way, the core principles of prioritizing risk management, responsible governance, and resilience stand firm; embedding sustainability in how we mine and invest is a trend set to persist despite rising polarization and politicization, war and contentious elections, and unpredictable market behaviour in 2024.

Many mining companies will continue to grapple with increasing ESG performance and reporting expectations, but this will also offer strategic opportunities. The ESG commitments of both investors and miners will be tested in the year ahead. Those who deploy the principles underpinning ESG in risk management and business strategies will better position themselves to strengthen both social licence and financial performance.

To help readers navigate the complexities of the mining ESG landscape in the year ahead, Sympact has compiled a complimentary report: Mining ESG: 2023 in Review and What to Expect in 2024. 

Rachel Dekker and Elizabeth Freele are the co-founders and managing partners of mining sustainability think tank and ESG consultancy Sympact. Sympact supports companies in ensuring their social performance meets growing expectations through advisory services, ESG training, and thought leadership.

Teck Resources (TSX: TECK.A, TECK.B; NYSE: TECK), Canada’s largest diversified miner, said its copper and zinc mine operations faced a number of challenges through 2023, resulting in the production of these metals falling short of its annual guidance.

Copper production came to tonnes, while its guidance for the year had been for between 320,000 and 365,000 tonnes.

Production was impacted by a slower ramp-up at the QB2 operation in Chile, which was plagued with cost overruns, and by a geotechnical fault at its Highland Valley copper operation in British Columbia that has now been stabilized.

Zinc in concentrate production of 644,000 tonnes was marginally below the low end of guidance of between 645,000 and 685,000 tonnes as a result of weather-related issues in the first quarter and equipment failures at the Red Dog mine, Teck said in the statement.

Refined zinc production of 266,600 tonnes was below guidance of  between 270,000 and 290,000 tonnes due to weather-related impacts in the first quarter as well as concentrate supply issues in the third quarter and beginning of the fourth quarter, it added.

Meanwhile, at Teck’s steelmaking coal business unit, production was higher than previously disclosed guidance. Steelmaking coal production of 23.7 million tonnes was higher than the top end of guidance due to strong performance in the fourth quarter and improvements in capital expenditure guidance for 2024, Teck said.

Uranium-focused Denison Mines (TSX: DML; NYSE: DNN) and lithium explorer Grounded Lithium (TSXV: GRD) have signed a deal that bets on low-cost extraction methods in Saskatchewan.

The agreement gives Denison the option to earn up to a 75% interest in Grounded’s Kindersley lithium brine project in western Saskatchewan, the companies said in a joint news release on Tuesday. Denison, focused on uranium further north in the Athabasca Basin will pay up to C$15.1 million for the interest, in cash payments of up to C$3.1 million. It will also fund project costs of up to C$12 million through an earn-in option.

Grounded Lithium shares were up 33% at C$0.10 apiece at mid-day in Toronto on the option deal, valuing the company at C$7.6 million. Its shares have traded between C$0.07 and C$0.50 over the past year.

The cash is expected to offer more than enough funding for a field pilot at the Kindersley lithium project (KLP) that both companies plan to advance. Kindersley, located just north of the namesake town near the Alberta border, sits on top of the Leduc/Duperow formations that underlie the Prairie provinces.

“This is very significant for us in terms of helping us unlock the value of our project,” Grounded CEO Gregg Smith told The Northern Miner in an interview. “Denison is also doing first-of-a-kind uranium mining in Saskatchewan, where they’re doing in-situ extraction of uranium. That really reduces the cost. It’s a very innovative approach to it and it will be first of its kind in Canada. It kind of goes to the heart of what their company is.”

Denison CEO and president David Cates said in a statement the company views lithium as a complementary mineral to Denison’s core uranium business, with both identified as critical minerals for the clean energy transition.

“Combining our deep local technical capabilities with the Grounded team’s experience on KLP has the potential to create an incredible environment to incubate the KLP to emerge as a premier lithium project in a top mining jurisdiction,” he said.

The investment from Denison comes as momentum builds for lithium brine projects on the Prairies, despite a drop in lithium prices, with Grounded having released a strong preliminary economic assessment (PEA) for Kindersley last July that showed it could produce 11,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide over a 20-year life. EMP Metals (CSE: EMPS) is also advancing a lithium brine project in Saskatchewan, along with E3 Lithium (TSXV: ETL) and Volt Lithium (TSXV: VLT), in neighbouring Alberta.

Denison’s investment in lithium comes as prices for the battery metal have tanked, while prices of its principal commodity, uranium, have risen to highs not seen since 2007. On Monday, the spot price hit $103 per lb. The price increase is being driven by rising demand for nuclear energy projects and limited supply.

Denison is also emerging as a potential pioneer of in-situ recovery (ISR) mining in the Athabasca Basin, after a final set of field tests last November showed it could be successfully deployed on a commercial scale at the Wheeler River project. ISR involves pumping a solution underground, where it separates uranium from the ore and is later pumped back to the surface. It costs less than underground mining, doesn’t require digging pits and has a smaller environmental footprint.

In that test, Denison recovered 14,400 lb. of uranium oxide (U3O8) in solution in the leaching and neutralization phases, and recovered over 99.99% of the contained uranium in the solution management phase. Previous tests going back to 2019 also returned positive results, including one in 2022 that Denison called ‘history in the making.’

While both processes involve pumping a solution to the surface, Grounded uses direct lithium extraction to draw lithium-containing brine from old oil wells underground. The extracted solution is purified in a surface plant to bring out the high-grade lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide.

Canaccord Genuity analyst Katie Lachapelle told The Northern Miner that if Denison successfully obtains its permits to mine, Wheeler River could open up new possibilities for uranium projects.

“It’ll unlock a lot of 20, 50, 60 million lb. deposits in Canada that otherwise wouldn’t have been considered super economic, or that you wouldn’t want to put the capital into building a shaft. So, I think it’s a game changer,” she said.

Kindersley’s first phase has an after-tax net present value (at 8% discount) of $1 billion, an internal rate of return of 48.5% and at initial capital costs of $335 million, with a payback period of 3.7 years.

KLP hosts 586,044 measured tonnes of lithium hydroxide, 525,651 indicated tonnes and 3.6 million inferred tonnes, all grading at 74 mg of lithium per litre.

The new deal entails Denison increasing its cash payments to Grounded from C$800,000 in the first phase of Kindersley to C$3.1 million in the third, in line with an increase in Denison’s interest from 30% to 75%. Expenditures for the project will generally be wholly funded by Denison.

The agreement will last until Denison opts to acquire its working interest and convert it to a formal joint venture, or until either June 30, 2028 or another date agreed by the companies.

Denison has also bought a 5% gross overriding royalty on KLP for C$800,000, which would drop to 2% after all approvals for the project are received, and be removed entirely 15 months after the earn-in agreement closes.

The two companies have established an area of mutual interest for any lands acquired within 10 km of any properties contained within Kindersley that are prospective for lithium.

“Their investment is helping us de-risk by putting in place the pilot,” Smith said. “That allows us to fine tune our engineering studies and produce the feasibility so then we can start to march forward towards commerciality.”

Denison shares were down 2.1% to C$2.74, giving it a market capitalization of C$2.4 billion. Its shares traded between C$1.28 and C$2.82 over a 52-week window.

Amex Exploration (TSXV: AMX) is making a non-brokered private placement of about 11.3 million charity flow-through shares at a price of C$2.35 each. The shares will be taken up by Eldorado Gold (TSX: ELD; NYSE: EGO) for a consideration of approximately C$15 million. Following the acquisition, Eldorado will hold a 9.9% interest in Amex.

The offering is expected to close on or before Feb. 2 and is subject to certain conditions.

“This investment represents a strong endorsement of the work conducted at the Perron project to date and leaves us well capitalized to pursue a dual strategy of advancing known zones of gold mineralization while continuing to unlock significant exploration potential through targeting new discoveries. We feel we have only scratched the surface of the gold potential at Perron,” Amex CEO Victor Cantore said in a news release.

“In addition, the company is well funded to produce a resource estimate and follow on preliminary economic assessment of the Perron project,” he added.

Amex’s flagship, wholly owned Perron gold property is 110 km north of Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec, and includes the historic Normetal gold mine. The property is accessible via road year-round and near power and water services.

Drilling discovered significant gold zones over a 4-km strike, giving the project the potential for a bulk tonnage open pit and high-grade underground mine, the company said.

The Eastern gold zone was first drilled in 2017 and contains a high-grade zone in a quartz vein system. The company recently drilled 23.81 g/t gold over 4.3 metres, including 2 metres at 50.35 g/t in hole PE-21-318W3 beginning at 1,100 metres below surface.

Hole 318W4 returned 6.55 metres grading 29.57 g/t gold, including 1.3 metre of 45.34 g/t gold from 1,150 metres. Hole 347W3 returned 3.5 metres at 5.10 g/t gold including 0.5 metre at 24.19 g/t beginning at 1,000 metres.

Metallurgical tests done on samples from this high-grade zone achieved gold and silver recoveries of over 99%, with 77% of the gold reporting to a gravity circuit.

Seabridge Gold (TSX: SEA; NYSE: SA) has updated the prefeasibility study (PFS) for its 100%-owned Courageous Lake open pit project in the Northwest Territories, creating a more sustainable and profitable operation than the earlier PFS done in 2012. The new PFS led by Ausenco demonstrates the production of 2.5 million oz. of gold over an initial 12.6-year mine life.

Everything that should go up is up, and that which should be lowered is lower. The study increased gold reserves in the measured and indicated resource by 39% to 11 million oz. Courageous Lake now has an after-tax net present value (NPV) with a 5% discount of $523 million, an internal rate of return (IRR) of 20.6%, with a 2.8-year payback. Annual production will be 201,000 oz. of gold at an all-in sustaining cost of $999 per ounce, in the lowest quartile of the World Gold Council cost curve.

The PFS also highlights a 73% increase in the after-tax NPV 5% to $523 million, a 50% reduction in initial capital to $747 million, and an increased after-tax IRR to 20.6% from 7.3%. The average gold reserve grade increased 19% to 2.6 g/t, and the life of mine strip ratio was reduced 39% to 7.58. The increase for contained gold in measured and indicated resources rose to 11 million oz., up 38% from 8 million oz. in 2012.

“We now have a second valuable 10-million-plus ounce gold resource project in a safe jurisdiction. The project consists of an entire greenstone belt which has prospective shallow drill results and gold showings along its 54 km length,” said Seabridge chairman and CEO Rudi Fronk. “As we move towards a joint venture on our KSM project, we will be shifting our attention to Courageous Lake’s potential to generate considerable additional shareholder value.“

He estimated that the PFS covers only 30% of the Courageous Lake resources identified. Therefore, the project has considerable potential to exceed the original 12.6-year mine life.

The Courageous Lake project includes two deposits – Courageous Lake and Walsh Lake. Only the first was included in the PFS. The Courageous Lake resource was estimated using information from 616 drill holes from which 127,169 metres of core was tested. The measured and indicated resource is 145.2 million tonnes grading 2.36 g/t gold and containing 11.0 million oz. The inferred portion is 40.6 million tonnes grading 2.52 g/t and containing 3.3 million oz. of gold.

The Walsh Lake deposit has an inferred resource of 4.1 million tonnes grading 4.18 g/t and containing 554,800 oz. of gold.

The above numbers are from the 2024 PFS using a base gold price of $1,850 per oz. Seabridge also included a separate preliminary economic assessment for a potential underground expansion below the Courageous Lake pit.

The Courageous Lake property is located 240 km northeast of Yellowknife, NWT, and is situated within the Courageous Lake greenstone belt (CLGB) in the Slave Structural Province. The property is a collection of mineral leases and mining claims that trend north-south along the approximately 54 km length of the CLGB. The property includes the past gold producing properties of the Salmita and the Tundra mines.

The project site will be accessed via spur winter road connecting to the Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road (TCWR) that is normally open from late January or early February until the end of March of each year and services the nearby Ekati and Diavik mines.

The 2024 PFS mine plan uses an open pit truck and shovel operation. Mill feed is to be processed onsite by crushing, grinding, and flotation. Flotation concentrate will be pressure oxidized and cyanide leached to produce a gold doré.

Waste rock at the project will be directly hauled to the co-placement storage facility (CPSF) along with flotation tailings. Neutralized leach tailings will be placed in a separate facility.

Kenorland Minerals (TSXV: KLD) agreed on Tuesday with Japan’s Sumitomo Metal Mining to exchange the company’s 20% participating interest in the Frotet gold project for a 4% net smelter return royalty.

This would result in Sumitomo consolidating 100% ownership of the project, thus ending the joint venture partnership established by the companies in April 2018. Kenorland initially staked the project in 2017.

The 393 sq. km. Frotet property is located within the Opatica geological subprovince of Quebec. It is adjacent to the past-producing Troilus mine, which has indicated gold resources totalling 9.23 million oz., and covers several major deformation zones associated with known orogenic gold prospects.

Hosted on the property is the Regnault gold system, a greenfields discovery made by the Kenorland-Sumitomo JV in 2020 following two years of systematic exploration. Since the initial discovery, Regnault has seen extensive exploration, totaling 82,273 metres of drilling (193 drill holes).

“Today marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter as we exchange our participating project interest for a substantial royalty interest covering the Frotet project. This includes the high-grade Regnault gold discovery, which has been steadily advancing under our joint venture with Sumitomo over the past year,” Kenorland CEO Zach Flood said in a press release.

Kenorland’s 4% net smelter return royalty will be subject to buydown rights in favour of Sumitomo.

A 0.25% royalty interest may be purchased for a C$3 million cash payment to the company within 5 years, and a further 0.50% royalty interest may be purchased for a C$10 million cash payment within 10 years.

By 1:40 p.m. ET Tuesday, Kenorland’s stock was up by 25% for a market capitalization of C$47.7 million ($35.3m).

Ivanhoe Mines (TSX: IVN) and DRC state miner Gécamines will jointly work on bringing back to life the historic Kipushi zinc-copper-germanium-silver mine, in the country’s south, by mid-year.

The deal involves Gécamines increasing its stake in the Kiphusi Corporation, which is currently a 100%-owned subsidiary of Ivanhoe, to 38% and further to 43% in 2027.

The Canadian miner has been working on getting Kipushi back online and it estimates that a new concentrator, currently under construction, as well as underground development will be ready in the second quarter of the year. 

This means that mining at Kipushi could restart in the second quarter of 2024, with the operation to produce more than 250,000 tonnes of zinc annually over the first five years.

“The signing of the new joint venture agreement heralds the beginning of a new era of production for the Kipushi mine, which will resume operations one hundred years after first opening in 1924 as the world’s richest copper mine,” Ivanhoe said.

The past-producing asset, considered the world’s highest-grade zinc mine, was shut down in 1993 due to political instability and low metal prices.

Gécamines chairperson Guy-Robert Nkunzi said the relaunch of the Kipushi mine is a source of pride for all its former employees, the local communities of Kiphusi town, the Haut-Katanga province and the country as a whole.

Once a minimum of the current proven and probable reserves and up to 12 million tonnes of ore have been mined and processed, an additional 37% of the share capital and voting rights in the JV shall be transferred to Gécamines, after which the state-owned miner will have an 80% stake in the mine.

Ivanhoe also said it had held talks with the provincial government of Haut-Katanga about a new commercial DRC-Zambia road border crossing at the town of Kipushi. 

A contractor has already been selected to set up a a 13-km sealed, bypass road around the town of Kipushi, which will connect the existing main road to the mine site.

Uranium Energy (NYSE American: UEC), the largest diversified uranium company in North America, is set to reboot its fully permitted, past-producing Christensen Ranch in-situ recovery (ISR) operations in Wyoming on the back of roaring prices for the nuclear energy fuel.

The recovered uranium will be processed at the fully operational Irigaray central processing plant (CPP), which has a current licensed capacity of 2.5 million pounds of uranium oxide (U3O8) per year. The Irigaray plant is the hub central to four fully permitted ISR projects in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming, including Christensen Ranch.

First production is expected during August of this year and will be funded with existing cash on the company’s balance sheet, UEC said in a news release Tuesday, adding that it will provide additional information on the expected volumes for the first year in the coming months.

Shares of UEC were up by 5.5% as of 11:50 a.m. ET on the Christensen Ranch restart announcement, giving the company a market capitalization of $3.2 billion.

“This is the moment we have been working towards for over a decade, having acquired and further developed leading US and Canadian assets with an exceptional, deeply experienced operations team,” UEC chief executive Amir Adnani said in the statement.

“Uranium market fundamentals are the best the industry has witnessed, and various supply shocks have accelerated the bull market with recent prices eclipsing the $100 per pound level. With this exciting backdrop, we are pleased to announce our production restart in Wyoming.”

As UEC’s strategy has been to remain 100% unhedged, uranium produced from Christensen Ranch will be sold at prevailing spot market price, which was $106/lb. U3O8 as of January 15, 2024, the company said.

The Christensen Ranch project was part of the Wyoming ISR asset portfolio anchored by the Irigaray plant that UEC acquired from Russia’s Rosatom in late 2021, as part of efforts to repatriate these assets to US ownership.

It now forms part of UEC’s Wyoming hub and spoke ISR platform that consists of 12 projects with a combined measured and indicated resource of 66.2 million lb. contained within 58.5 million tonnes grading 0.069% U3O8 and an inferred resource of 15.1 million lb. within 10.9 million tonnes grading 0.064% U3O8.

The Wyoming resource, which was reported in 2022 following UEC’s acquisition of the Uranium One Americas and Anfield Energy assets, represents the largest S-K 1300 uranium resources reported in the US.

Adding in the company’s South Texas hub and spoke ISR platform would expand this S-K 1300-compliant resource base even further, with over 75 million lb. of measured and indicated resources and 25 million lb. of inferred resources.

Barrick Gold’s (TSX: ABX; NYSE: GOLD) Mark Bristow and Vale’s (NYSE: VALE) Mark Cutifani like Saudi Arabia’s plan to be a regional financial partnership hub because others racing to develop critical mineral projects won’t be able to afford everything they want in a depressed funding market.

The kingdom, with its vast oil wealth, wants to retain its energy dominance into the green metals era. It’s positioning itself as the leader of what it calls a super region that includes Africa and the Middle East and stretches into Asia to host a third of global resources. The country’s third annual Future Minerals Forum attracted about 15,000 delegates this week and may have generated some $20 billion in deals, according to organizers.

Barrick CEO Bristow said it was unrealistic for every country to expect they can participate fully in the industry’s four main sectors of exploring, producing, processing and supplying, but that’s what he heard at a ministerial meeting. They don’t have enough cash and will end up slashing budgets for their other sectors like education and health care.

“For those countries that are still building a nascent mining industry, start with the first two steps, exploration and mining,” he said on a conference panel. “Downstream investment is a tough business: big skills gaps, the infrastructure you need is a big step again. Why not partner as per the concept around the super region and get the best of both worlds and negotiate with partners on returns for providing materials?”

Saudi Arabia is different than most countries in the region because it’s built extractive industry experience and a balance sheet enabling them to tackle downstream projects, he said.

Cutifani, chairman of Vale Base Metals, agreed with Bristow about supporting exploration and mining development over more risky processing.

“Countries go broke trying to get there too quick,” he said.

Saudi Arabia started a $182 million exploration incentive program, officials said during the event. State mining operation Ma’aden is keen to explore the region’s Arabian-Nubian shield of Precambrian rock straddling the Red Sea. The country has been offering foreign investors full ownership of projects, co-funding of up to 75% of capital spending, five years free of royalties, a 20% corporate tax and 30% discounts on local processing.

“I like to think of the kingdom as a connector connecting countries that are today challenged with finance, challenged with logistics, being landlocked in Central Asia, but also our brothers and sisters in Africa who also have their own challenges in accessing all of this,” Saudi Minister of Investment, Khalid Al-Falih, told the conference. “The kingdom can be a partner to countries in the region and of course with our private sector.”

The US is embracing the concept. Geoffrey Pyatt, Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources, noted partnerships are the best way to help mobilize the annual $4 trillion for the world to meet lithium needs set to grow 42 times and graphite by 25 times by 2040.

“The biggest challenge is equity, ensuring that the benefits and the costs of the energy transition are distributed in a way that is sustainable so we don’t end up with one story in wealthy countries and another in the developing world,” Pyatt said. “The biggest opportunity is to reshape global supply chains, leveraging the kind of partnerships that my team is to build.”

Other obstacles include policy to quicken permits times, innovation in recycling, batteries and extraction technologies to narrow the gap in metals supply and demand, and investment, Saudi vice-minister of mining, Khalid Al Mudaifer, told the forum.

In Saudi Arabia alone, 3 trillion riyals must be invested in mining, refining and smelting by 2030 plus 1 trillion riyals each for infrastructure and power generation, Al Mudaifer said.

“That’s almost more than three times the current investment level,” he said. “More than that, we need 200 to 400 engineers and mining professionals.”

Landlocked Zambia wants to see more collaboration among countries and to retain more wealth from mining, the country’s minister of mines and minerals development, Paul Kabuswe, told a panel.

“We haven’t seen the benefit that we must see as a country endowed with those minerals,” Kabuswe said. “We have a lot of impoverished people. And this must come to an end. How does it come to an end? It’s through collaboration.”

Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo signed a battery metals development partnership in Washington in 2022. Amos Hochstein, a special advisor to US President Joe Biden, spoke of how the administration plans to boost investment in the Lobito rail corridor cutting across Angola to the Atlantic from the copper belt of Zambia and the DRC.

Investment is more attracted to reduced risk. But it’s difficult to find consistent long-term policies to serve the industry’s common 30-year project timeframes when there’s a resurgence of coups, civil wars and disputed elections in Africa.

Gareth Penny, chairman of investment firm NinetyOne, said perceived risk holds too much sway over real risk when the loss from his company’s $2 billion infrastructure fund over 19 years and 19 African projects was less than 1%.

Tom Kendall, a managing director at ICBC Standard Bank, a joint China-South Africa venture, says companies, governments, non-state actors and institutions need to align their perceptions of risk to shorten project times. But he says he’s excited to use Saudi as a mining finance hub to springboard into the region.

Frank Giustra, CEO of Fiore Group, sees partnerships as a way around the funding bottleneck created by equity investors abandoning cash-poor explorer stocks while cash-rich senior mining companies are too risk-averse to invest.

“What we need is for the senior mining companies and or countries like the kingdom to partner with the junior explorers,” he said. “Because you have to find this stuff. And it’s really hard to raise the money.”

Vale CEO Eduardo Bartolomeo said nations and industry must prioritize to improve permitting times and be more collaborative between nations, governments and the private sector.

Jeremy Weir, CEO of metals trader Trafigura, said short-term prices for lithium and other battery metals are suffering from slower capital flows partly because of a sluggish Chinese economy.

“My biggest concern on a long-term basis is what happens in the three-to-five-year period,” he said. “If we don’t see the market move now, we have a real issue and do we price ourselves out of any transition in the five-year time frame?”

Andrew Trahar, partner at Vision Blue Resources, a Guernsey-based private equity firm, lauded Saudi Arabia for a clear vision and strategy to seek investments after banks and equity capital providers reduced mining funding over the past decade.

“This is a very refreshing feeling,” said Trahar, who founded Vision Blue with former Xstrata CEO Sir Mick Davis. “We’ve had a huge number of meetings here, fantastic engagement, lots of support from the Ministry of Industry and Resources, so we’re going away with the next steps identified and we’re back in a month already.”

A new paper in Nature Physics shows that by cramming lots of rare-earth ions into a crystal, some will form pairs that act as highly coherent qubits, thus debunking the idea that solid-state qubits need to be super dilute in an ultra-clean material to achieve long lifetimes. 

According to the study’s authors, one of the major barriers to practical quantum computing has been how to make qubits that retain their quantum information long enough to be useful. 

It’s widely accepted that the key to qubits with long lifetimes, or ‘coherences’, is cleanliness. Qubits lose quantum information through a process known as decoherence when they start to interact with their environment.

So, the conventional wisdom goes, keep them away from each other and from other disturbing influences, and they’ll hopefully survive a little longer.

However, such a ‘minimalistic’ approach to qubit design is problematic in practice. Finding suitable ultra-pure materials is not easy. Furthermore, diluting qubits to the extreme makes scale-up of any resulting technology challenging. 

The new research conducted at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, ETH Zurich, and EPFL shows how qubits with long lifetimes can exist in a cluttered environment.

“In the long run, how to make it onto a chip is a question that’s universally discussed for all types of qubits. Instead of diluting more and more, we’ve demonstrated a new pathway by which we can squeeze qubits closer together,” Gabriel Aeppli, senior author of the study, said in a media statement.

Aeppli and his colleagues created solid-state qubits from terbium doped into crystals of yttrium lithium fluoride. They showed that within a crystal jam-packed with rare-earth ions were qubit gems with much longer coherences than expected in such a dense system.

“For a given density of qubits, we show that it’s a much more effective strategy to throw in the rare-earth ions and pick the gems from the junk rather than trying to separate the individual ions from each other by dilution,” Markus Müller, co-author of the study, said.

Like classical bits that use 0 or 1 to store and process information, qubits also use systems that can exist in two states, albeit with the possibility of superpositions. When qubits are created from rare-earth ions, typically, a property of the individual ions—such as the nuclear spin, which can point up or down—is used as this two-state system.

The team could succeed with a radically different approach because, rather than being formed from single ions, their qubits are formed from strongly interacting pairs of ions. Instead of using the nuclear spin of single ions, the pairs form qubits based on superpositions of different electron shell states.

Within the crystal matrix, only a few of the terbium ions form pairs. 

“If you throw a lot of terbium into the crystal, by chance, there are pairs of ions—our qubits. These are relatively rare, so the qubits themselves are quite dilute,” Adrian Beckert, lead author of the study, said.

So why aren’t these qubits disturbed by their messy environment? It turns out that these gems, by their physical properties, are shielded from the junk. Because they have a different characteristic energy at which they operate, they cannot exchange energy with the single terbium ions—in essence, they are blind to them.

“If you make an excitation on a single terbium, it can easily hop over to another terbium, causing decoherence,” Müller said. “However, if the excitation is on a terbium pair, its state is entangled, so it lives at a different energy and cannot hop over to the single terbium. I’d have to find another pair, but it can’t because the next one is a long distance away.”

The researchers stumbled upon the phenomenon of qubit pairs when probing terbium-doped yttrium lithium fluoride with microwave spectroscopy. The team also uses light to manipulate and measure quantum effects in materials, and the same kind of qubits are expected to operate at the higher frequencies of optical laser light. This is of interest as rare-earth metals possess optical transitions, which give an easy way in with light.

“Eventually, our goal is to also use light from the X-ray Free Electron Laser SwissFEL or Swiss Light Source SLS to witness quantum information processing,” says Aeppli. This approach could be used to read out entire qubit ensembles with X-ray light.

In the meantime, terbium is an attractive choice of dopant: it can be easily excited by frequencies in the microwave range used for telecommunications.

Taseko Mines (TSX, LON: TKO) (NYSE: TGB) has inked a deal with Taurus Mining Royalty Fund that would allow the Canadian miner to speed up construction of its Florence copper mine in Arizona, US.

The $50 million agreement with Taurus is for the sale of a 1.95% gross-revenue royalty generated from Taseko’s Florence copper project, the company said, adding it expects to receive the funding in early February, subject to customary closing conditions. 

The Vancouver-based miner also anticipates receiving the first $10 million of the $50 million Mitsui earmarked in December for the project’s development later this month.

Construction activities to date have been mainly focused on site preparations, earthworks and civil work for the commercial wellfield, which Taseko expects to start drilling in February. 

The company also plans to sign a fixed-price contract with TIC Kiewit as general contractor for building the SX/EW plant and related surface infrastructure. All the major plant components are already onsite and the construction will begin in the second quarter of this year, Taseko said.

Chief executive Stuart McDonald said the company is “eager” to ramp up the construction activities at Florence, which will soon become “a major new source of low-carbon copper cathode for the US market.”

The project, being built with in situ recovery rather than conventional open pit or underground methods, is expected to begin production in the fourth quarter of 2025, the company said.

The 43-101 report of March 2023 detailed a 22-year mine life with an annual production capacity of 85 million pounds of copper. When the report was written, there was $232 million remaining to be spent to reach commercial production.

Florence has proven and probable reserves of 290 million tonnes grading 0.36% copper.

Toro Energy (ASX: TOE) has unveiled plans to grow its Wiluna uranium project in Western Australia with the integration of two of the company’s fully-owned satellite deposits currently under assessment as part of an extension study.

The planned scoping follows up on the promise in a previous evaluation that identified meaningful upside through the inclusion of nearby uranium resources at Lake Way and Centipede-Millipede satellite deposits.

The new study will evaluate whether the integration of both deposits to the company’s planned Lake Maitland operation extends the potential processing of high-grade uranium resource well beyond the seventh year. Toro had previously said that the standalone Lake Maitland operation is expected to process high grade material for up to seven years.

Executive chair Richard Homsany said that, alongside the extension study, Toro is also continuing pilot plant design work for the project located 105 km south-east of the Wiluna township and 730 km north-east of Perth.

“We are pleased that strengthening uranium market conditions continue as we develop and seek to maximize the value of the Wiluna uranium project, especially our evaluation of extending our Lake Maitland uranium-vanadium processing operation,” Homsany said in the statement.

According to 2023 figures by the World Nuclear Association, Australia’s known uranium resources are the world’s largest – almost one-third of the globe’s total. The country does not use nuclear power itself, but it’s the world’s fourth producer of the radioactive material, behind Kazakhstan, Canada and Namibia.

The spot price for uranium has been hitting records highs in past weeks and climbed to just over $103 per pound on Monday, according to Numerco, a UK-based spot price for uranium. This level, not seen since 2007, follows a roughly 90% price gain for the metal in 2023 in a market that has struggled to keep up with fresh demand.

Last week, prices for uranium hit an almost 15-year high after the world’s largest producer, Kazakhstan’s Kazatomprom (LON: KAP), warned it was likely to fall short of its output targets over the next two years.

Centamin (TSX: CEE; LSE: CEY) has helped Egypt develop a new mining law due for passage within weeks as it seeks to expand the Sukari gold mine in the ancient land’s southeast.

The London-based company, consultants Wood Mackenzie and Barrick Gold (TSX: ABX; NYSE: GOLD) advised the country which began revising regulations in 2018, Centamin CEO Martin Horgan said in an interview with The Northern Miner in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

“You had all this untapped geological potential available, but the old-style oil and gas concessions didn’t really work,” Horgan said on Wednesday at the Future Minerals Forum. “We’ve been negotiating the final details to a new royalty, taxation, free-carry model, basically bringing Egypt in line with pretty much the rest of the world.”

Centamin is investing in Egypt as wider interest in the Nubian Shield straddling the Red Sea gathers pace following neighbour Saudi Arabia’s third annual conference on developing an exploration super region stretching from Africa to Asia. Sukari, south of Luxor between the Nile and the Red Sea, has produced more than 5 million oz. of gold since it started production in 2009. Artisanal output dates from 2,500 BC.

Egypt’s current mining regulation was based on profit sharing with the government. The proposed law is to be a 5% royalty, a 22.5% tax rate and a 15% government free-carry stake. Over the life of a project, returns to the company and the state are about equal, Horgan said.

“Where we ended up is not quite as good as Western Australia or Canada, about the same as Côte d’Ivoire, and probably a bit better than Ghana,” Horgan said.

Centamin, which spent some $750 million over the past four years to improve efficiency at Sukari, Egypt’s only modern gold mine, plans to connect to the country’s electrical grid and company solar panels this year, alone cutting $41 million a year in diesel costs.

It wants to expand Sukari with nearby discoveries. It is exploring 3,000 sq. km in the eastern desert area near the mine. It’s budgeting 15,000 metres of reverse circulation drilling for the new area, metallurgical testing, a conceptual resource estimate and an optimization study to steer drilling.

It posted first results Jan. 9 showing 46 metres grading 3.3 grams gold per tonne from 91 metres down drill hole LSRC030 and 77 metres at 1.84 grams from 44 metres depth in drill hole LSRC012 at the Little Sukari prospect28 km west of the Sukari mine.

At the Umm Majal prospect 23 km west of the mine, drill hole UMRC006 cut 18 metres grading 2.33 grams from 21 metres depth and drill hole UMRC003 returned 15 metres at 1.46 grams from 4 metres down.

“Pretty happy with the first-pass results, good widths, grades,” Horgan said. “Depending on how that continues to develop from here, clearly we want to see the potential for a satellite feed to be sort of augmenting the Sukari abilities.”

Sukari, with a projected mine life to 2035, holds 194 million proven and probable tonnes grading 1.23 grams per tonne for 7.7 million oz. of contained gold, the company said last month. The mine also holds 392 million measured and indicated tonnes at 1.06 grams per tonne for 13.4 million oz. of contained gold.

Centamin is advancing the Doropo gold project in Côte d’Ivoire to a feasibility study by mid-year. It might produce 200,000 oz. a year over a decade after $400 million in construction costs, Horgan said.

The company is poised to invest in a new project that could be exploration, developing or producing, somewhere in Africa or the Middle East in or near the London time zone, Horgan said. It was visiting the Saudi Arabia forum on a fact-finding mission, he said. Outside of Egypt, any project would likely have a gold component, he said.

“There’s obviously lots of potential here, lots of ground that is to be explored. We think we’ve got the skill set, the knowledge and the financial wherewithal to be able to do that so we’re here to look at opportunity.”

Royal Road Minerals (TSXV: RYR) announced Monday that its Saudi Arabian joint venture vehicle, Royal Roads Arabia (RRA), has been given preferred bidder status for the Jabal Sahabiyah exploration licence in Asir province.

The JV was established on a 50/50 basis with Saudi investment holding company MSB for the purpose of copper and gold exploration in the kingdom. Royal Road is operator of the JV, which has submitted exploration licence applications over certain areas of interest.

The licensing round for Jabal Sahabiyah was announced by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources (MIMR) in early 2023, and proposals were submitted by August, the same month the JV vehicle was created.

According to Royal Road, the submissions were “appraised on merit and required the preferred bidder to demonstrate skill-relevant and suitably qualified management and technical personnel, access to sufficient resources, and to prove high-level performance and a commitment to the principles of sustainability.”

It added that specific assessment criteria included such aspects as proposed exploration work program, exploration spend, technical expertise and social impact management plan.

The Jabal Sahabiyah exploration licence covers approximately 284 km2 in area. It was discovered as a result of regional mapping by Riofinex in the late 1970s. The prospect is located in the Nabitah-Tathlith belt and consists of copper-zinc-lead mineralized gossans and vein-gold occurrences hosted in greenschist and amphibolite facies meta-sedimentary and granitoid rocks.

Twenty shallow percussion drill holes (totaling 617.5 metres) were drilled into one of the gossan occurrences by Riofinex, with best results being 14 metres at 0.6% copper and 5.1% zinc and 6.5 metres at 0.9% copper and 0.6% zinc, both from surface.

“We are grateful to the MIMR for granting us this opportunity at Jabal Sahabiyah, and we are eager to get started. Over 40 years have lapsed since exploration work was conducted at the prospect area and ore deposit studies, surface and subsurface exploration techniques have advanced significantly over that period,” Royal Road CEO Tim Coughlin said in a press release.

Coughlin added the company “will be deploying our own drone-borne hyper-spectral scanner, gamma ray spectrometer and magnetometer and expect to have teams on the ground, mapping and sampling at Jabal Sahabiyah imminently.”

As the preferred bidder, RRA will be granted the Jabal Sahabiyah licence subject to the payment of a performance financial guarantee (to be agreed with MIMR) and the satisfaction of certain legal and regulatory requirements.

The licence will have an initial term of five years, with an option to renew every further five years for a total of 15 years. RRA has committed to minimum expenditure of $5.5 million (20.65 million Saudi riyal) over the first five years. Expenditure is success dependent subject to surrender of the performance guarantee.

Shares of Royal Road Minerals surged 10.5% by 2:30 p.m. ET in Toronto following the announcement. The company has a market capitalization of C$26.5 million ($19.7m).

Maritime Resources (TSXV: MAE) has begun its cleanup of the recently acquired Pine Cove mill. Maritime purchased all the shares of Point Rousse Mining in June 2023, and the agreement included the mill which previously recovered gold and silver.

The company has already recovered material and poured a gold doré bar containing 281.1 oz. of gold and generating about C$750,000 of revenue. The remaining fines and residues in the mill will be collected and concentrated by a specialized contractor for shipment to a refinery for final recovery of any precious metals.

The proceeds will be used for general working capital purposes.

Maritime has been sampling various areas of the mill property and identified material in the #2 tailings storage facility grading between 1.1 and 31.1 g/t gold. Further sampling will determine the suitability of processing this material through the Pine Cove mill.

The tails also contain fines from a previous wash plant operation when waste rock was crushed for sale as aggregates. Recent sampling of this portion returned a grade of 11.4 g/t gold. Consideration is being given to installing a gravity recovery circuit for this material.

Maritime is focused on advancing the 100%-owned Hammerdown gold project in the Baie Verte district of Newfoundland.

Lundin Mining (TSX: LUN; NASDAQ: LUMI) is pleased with its 2023 production of metals, which was at the guidance midpoint or above for all metals produced. A record 694 million lb. of copper, and a respectable 408.2 million lb. of zinc, a record 36.2 million lb. of nickel, and also 148,968 oz. of gold (the upper end of guidance) were produced.

Highlights of individual mine production are listed below:

• The Candelaria mine in Chile achieved guidance with 335.1 million lb. of copper and 89,700 oz. of gold.
• The Caserones mine (also in Chile) was over guidance during the last half of the year with 143.8 million lb. of copper, and for the full year, output was 307.6 million lb.
• The Chapada mine in Brazil achieved guidance with 100.8 million lb. of copper and 59,268 oz. of gold.
• Zinc production was at the upper end of guidance at 68.4 million lb. for the Neves-Corvo mine in Portugal and slightly below guidance at 43.3 million lb. for the Zinkgruvan mine in Sweden.
• The Eagle mine in Michigan exceeded guidance for both copper (30 million lb.) and nickel (36.2 million lb.)

Looking ahead to 2024, Lundin expects the output to be largely in line with last year’s numbers. Guidance for copper is 806.9 million to 881.8 million lb.; for zinc is 429.9 million to 474 million lb.; for gold is 155,000 to 170,000 oz.; and for nickel is 22 million to 28.7 million lb.

Lundin president and CEO Jack Lundin said 2023 production was over 550,000 tonnes of copper equivalent. Last year’s guidance shows an increase of over 20% for copper production and 10% for zinc production over 2023.

“As we turn the page on a transformational year for the company, our focus remains on achieving operational excellence by consistently maintaining elevated safety standards, all while meeting production guidance at competitive costs,” he added.

Lundin also forecast sustaining capital across all producing mines to be C$1.13 billion ($840 million). In order to advance the Josemaria copper-gold project in Argentina to a production decision, the company plans to make capital expenditures of C$301.7 million ($225 million).