Copper market’s biggest whale fuels speculation of a major shift
The world’s single biggest buyer of copper, State Grid Corp. of China, has slowed its purchases of copper wire this year.
Sandfire Resources (ASX: SFR) announced on Thursday first copper concentrate production at its Motheo mine in Botswana, which has become the second producing mine in the Kalahari Copper Belt.
Commissioning of the mine, under construction for the past two years, is almost complete and the first shipment of copper concentrates is expected by the middle of this calendar year, the Australian miner said.
“The Motheo team will now focus on completing commissioning activities and ramping-up the processing plant to its initial 3.2 million tonnes per annum processing capacity, which is expected to be achieved during the September quarter of the 2024 financial year,” CEO Brendan Harris said in the statement.
The Kalahari Copper Belt, which extends for nearly 1,000 km from northeast Botswana to western Namibia, is believed to be one of the world’s most under-explored copper-silver regions.
Motheo is the second copper mine to be developed in the area, which is geologically similar to the Central African Copper Belt that runs through DRC and Zambia.
Cupric Canyon’s Khoemacau copper mine began concentrate production in June 2021 and achieved full production in Q4 2022.
Once in full production, Motheo will produce roughly 30,000 tonnes of copper and 1.2 million ounces of silver per annum over an initial 10 years at all-in sustaining costs of $1.76 per pound of copper.
Sandfire has already approved a $71.9 million expansion to 5.2Mtpa. The plan is to incorporate the A4 deposit, whose environmental and social impact assessment has been approved by Botswana’s Department of Environmental Affairs. The official nod, the company said, paves the way to acquiring a mining license.
