Name of the Project
Haib copper project.

Location
Near Noordover, in the south of Namibia. 

Project Owner/s
Koryx Copper, formerly Deep-South Resources.

Project Description
An updated preliminary economic assessment (PEA) has shown the  project to be amenable to bioheap-leaching.

The PEA envisages a life-of-mine of 24 years and a throughput of 20-million tonnes a year, with copper recovery estimated at 80%, and production estimated at 35 332 t/y of copper cathode and 51 081 t/y of copper sulphate.

The mine design is based on openpit methods. As the deposit comprises hard-rock material, the mining operations will involve the drill and blast of all excavated material, which will be segregated by cutoff grade.

The mining fleet will consist of appropriately sized hydraulic excavators and off-highway dump trucks, supported by standard opencut drilling and auxiliary equipment.

There will not be any tailings. The spent heaps will be rehabilitated and left in place. Owing to environmental reasons and water resources, the tailings from the pH adjustment process and the iron removal process will be disposed onto the spent heaps using filtered dry-stacked tailings.

Potential Job Creation
Not stated.

Net Present Value/Internal Rate of Return
The project has a pretax net present value, at a discount 7.5% rate, of $2.26-billion, and an internal rate of return 52.2%%, with a payback of 2.4 years.

Capital Expenditure
Capital expenditure is estimated at $341-million.

Planned Start/End Date
Not stated.

Latest Developments
Koryx filed an amended PEA technical report on January 22, 2024.

The amendment has not impacted on the material components of the PEA, notably resources, metallurgy, mine plan, cost estimates, economic analysis and environmental matters.

The main modifications include:

adding a pit constraint in the mineral resource estimation and details to support the choice of cutoff grade,

modifying the recommendations to propose to proceed with a prefeasibility instead of progressing immediately with a feasibility study; and

removing five metal extraction options to keep only one base case, as well as all the appendices attached to the original February 2021 technical report.

Key Contracts, Suppliers and Consultants
METS Engineering Group (updated PEA); Knight Piésold Consulting (scoping studies and assessments); Csiro (conduct bio-assisted heap-leaching column testwork); METS Engineering Group of Australia (testwork supervision); MSA Group (NI 43-101-compliant mineral resource estimate); Knight Piésold Consulting (ESIA) and Ferrodrill Namibia (drilling contract).

Contact Details for Project Information
Koryx Copper (Namibia), tel +264 61 435 8267 or email info@koryxcopper.com.