PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Copper miner Sandfire Resources is hopeful of taking a board-level decision on the T3 copper project, in Botswana, before the end of 2020, with the project likely to produce its first copper concentrate by early 2023.

Sandfire CEO and MD Karl Simich told the Africa Downunder Conference, in Perth, that the updated feasibility study for the T3 project is due in the next few weeks.

The original feasibility study, conducted by MOD Resources in 2019, found that a three-million-tonne-a-year operation would have the capacity to produce some 28 000 t/y of copper and 1.1-million ounces of silver over an 11.5-year mine life, for an initial capital investment of $182-million.

While the updated study would be based on a base case of 3.2-million tonnes a year of ore production, it would provide a platform for the introduction of a larger 5.2-million-tonne-a-year expansion case, with the addition of the A4 deposit, Simich said.

He noted that Sandfire was looking to create a multi-mine, multi-decade hub of operations in Botswana, with a number of drill targets already identified which could potentially expand the mine life of the operation.

Sandfire is expected to spend some A$18-million on exploration in Botswana in the next financial year.

Meanwhile, the company is also pursuing a gold production strategy at its DeGrussa mine, in Western Australia, as its copper operation came to the tail-end of its mine life.

Simich said that given the current high gold prices, the company would be looking to convert the DeGrussa mine into a modest 50 000 oz/y to 60 000 oz/y operation, with an expected mine life of between six to seven years.

An inferred mineral resource for the proposed gold project is expected by the end of the second quarter of the 2021 financial year, with a scoping study to follow thereafter.

Once the gold operation is under way, Sandfire would return its exploration focus in the region to copper, in the hopes of making further high-grade copper discoveries.