SURGE COPPER CORP. Surge Copper Corp. announce the results of its Preliminary Economic Assessment (the "PEA"), prepared in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"), for the Berg Project located in central British Columbia within the traditional territories of the Cheslatta Carrier Nation, Wet'suwet'en First Nation, and Wet'suwet'en including communities of Skin Tyee, Nee Tahi Buhn, and Witset. The PEA was completed by Ausenco Engineering Canada Inc. ("Ausenco") and is based on an updated mineral resource estimate completed by Moose Mountain Technical Services Inc. ("MMTS").
The PEA is the first economic study prepared in accordance with NI 43- 101 on the Berg Project and represents a significant milestone in the advancement of the Berg Project and the Company's overall strategy in the combined Berg-Ootsa district. The Company is currently earning a 70% interest in the Berg Project from Centerra Gold. All figures presented herein are on an unlevered, 100% basis, all currency numbers are either United States dollars (US$) or Canadian dollars (C$) as specified, all tonnes refer to metric tonnes, and all ounces refer to Troy ounces.
The PEA is preliminary in nature and includes Inferred Mineral Resources that are considered too speculative geologically to have the economic considerations applied to them that would enable them to be categorized as Mineral Reserves, and there is no certainty the PEA will be realized. The PEA was initiated in late 2022 after the completion of a broad set of trade-off studies led by Ausenco which focused on infrastructure opportunities and alternatives present in the Berg- Huckleberry-Ootsa district, spanning material movement technologies and logistics, electricity supply options, and tailings and waste management facility siting options. The study is also underpinned by significant metallurgical testwork completed on material from the Berg deposit by G&T Metallurgical Services Ltd. (now ALS Metallurgy), which demonstrated that conventional flotation processes can be used to produce marketable copper and molybdenum concentrates.
The PEA outlines a large, open-pit mining operation which, over the course of 31 years, would extract a mineable inventory to provide a mill feed of approximately 978 million tonnes with an average grade of 0.22% copper, 0.02% molybdenum, 4.5 g/t silver, and 0.02 g/t gold. The mine is developed in multiple phases, focusing on early extraction of the higher-grade portions of the deposit in the supergene enrichment zone. Mining is performed by way of conventional truck and shovel operations, with run-of-mine mill feed and certain volumes of waste rock crushed and transported via a 3.4-kilometre electrically powered overland conveyor system from the mine to the process plant located at 400 metres lower elevation to the west of the mine site.
The mill and concentrator process plant will operate at a 90,000 tonnes per day nominal capacity and will produce separate copper and molybdenum concentrates via a conventional sulphide flotation and molybdenum separation flowsheet. Process tailings and potentially acid generating ("PAG") waste rock will use co-storage of tailings and waste rock together for permanent storage in a tailings & waste rock management facility ("TWMF") located southwest of and adjacent to the process plant. Final copper concentrate products containing precious metal by-products will be transported by truck to one of several nearby deep seaports along the Pacific coast for sale to end customers, and molybdenum concentrates will be transported by truck to a rail load out location for toll roasting within continental North America before final sale of molybdenum oxide to end customers globally.
The study outlines a two-year construction period with pre-production capital expenditures of just under CAD 2.0 billion, sustaining capital expenditures over the life of mine of $1.5 billion, reclamation and closure costs at the end of the mine life of CAD 200 million, and total taxes paid over the life of mine, on an undiscounted basis, of CAD 4.9 billion.
