Pan Pacific Copper, Mitsui & Co. to Develop Caserones Cu Mine

Pan Pacific Copper, which is copper smelting joint venture of Nippon Mining & Metals and Mitsui Mining & Smelting, announced on Friday the firm decided to develop Caserones copper and molybdenum deposit in Chile for around US$ 2 billion when the firm finished the feasibility study and got environmental approval from Chilean authority. Mitsui & Co. participates in the project by purchasing 25% of the interest and supports the development.

The project starts the production in January 2013 at averaged 10,000 tonnes per year of copper through solvent extractive electrolytic copper winning process or SX-EW process. The project will supply averaged 110,000 tonnes per year of copper concentrate to Japanese smelters from September 2013. The project plans to produce annual 150,000 tonnes of copper concentrate, 30,000 tonnes of electrolytic copper and around 3,000 tonnes of molybdenum for 5 years from the start.

The project plans to keep the operation for 28 years through 2040. The project is expected to post 30-40 billion yen of recurring profit per year depending on the copper price. With the new mine, Pan Pacific Copper can increase the copper ore purchase rate from mines with the interests from current near 20% to around 50%.