Cyprium collars $50m copper cathode offtake prepayment facility for Nifty restart from Glencore
Glencore has signed a letter of intent to prepay $50 million to Cyprium for 100% of the copper cathode produced during phase one operations of the Nifty project restart.
Cyprium Metals (ASX: CYM) has collared a copper cathode offtake prepayment facility for its Nifty project restart with mining giant Glencore worth about $50 million.
Under an exclusive letter of intent, Glencore will prepay $50 million to Cyprium for 100% of the copper cathode produced during phase one operations at Nifty.
Cyprium is targeting between $240 million and $260 million in debt funding to finance the restart of operations at Nifty.
Cyprium managing director Barry Cahill said the company was “very pleased” to secure the agreement with Glencore.
“This is part of a fully funded finance package for the Nifty copper project,” he said.
“The restart economics are very robust, and we have continued to make further improvements to the Nifty copper project during the financing process.”
“We are looking forward to completing our total funding package so that we can commence executing our Nifty copper project restart plants.”
Glencore will purchase 100% of the copper cathode generated at Nifty – up to a maximum of 120,000 tonnes.
Offtake prices will be based on average market rates.
Nifty copper project
Nifty is located in Western Australia’s north-eastern Pilbara region and historically produced 700,000t of copper metal between 1993 and 2019.
The project comprises a 2.8 million tonne-per-annum sulphide concentrator and a 25,000tpa copper cathode heap leach solvent extraction and electrowinning (SX-EW) facility.
Other infrastructure includes a 21-megawatt gas turbine power station, gas pipeline, water supply and reticulation, mine village, sealed all weather airstrip and a 4G communications capability.
Last month, Cyprium revealed a resource update for the project, which now stands at 95.1Mt at 1% copper for 940,200t of contained metal.
The Nifty deposit remains open, with the current resource providing inventory for the phase one oxide operation and enough to underpin at least a 20-year open pit mine-life.
Within the resource is the oxide estimate which stands at 16.1Mt at 0.9% copper for 144,300t.
This oxide resource provides near surface copper inventory for the phase one operation.
At Nifty, Cyprium’s initial plan is to retreat the current heap leach pads as well as open pit oxide transitional material.