Construction works at Rosemont mine, Arizona to begin in 2016

TEMPE (Scrap Monster):  The Toronto-based Hudbay Minerals has announced plans to start construction activities at its Rosemont mine, Arizona in 2016. According to David Garofalo, CEO, Hudbay Minerals, the permitting and engineering works are now progressing as per schedule. These works are expected to get completed within the next eight to ten months, after which the two-year construction period will officially commence.

According to the company, the long-term outlook on copper still looks bright. The recent fall in copper prices are more cyclical by nature. The prices of the commodity had touched six-year lows recently. The decision to continue with the project comes at a time when other major copper producers including Asarco and Freeport-McMoran have recently announced their decision to layoff hundreds of jobs in Southern Arizona due to bad market conditions. Incidentally, feasibility studies suggest that the mine will be profitable for Hudbay even at copper prices as low as $1.85 per pound, on account of Rosemont’s extremely low operating cost when compared with copper mines around the world.

Hudbay Minerals had acquired the 20,100-hectare property in July 2014. The company has so far drilled 43 drill holes at the mine. Meantime, detailed engineering studies are being carried out by Ausenco. The projected cash cost for the mine is around $1.7 billion. The project is expected to produce up to 150,000 mt per year of copper.

Hudbay is a Canadian integrated mining company with operations, development properties and exploration activities across the Americas principally focused on the discovery, production and marketing of base and precious metals. The company aims to produce 140,000-175,000 mt of copper, 95,000-120,000 mt of zinc and 135,000-170,000 oz of gold equivalent this year.