Categories: Base Metals / Mining Stocks
Topics: General Base Metals / Copper Stocks

Gunnison Copper (TSX: GCU)(OTC: GCUMF) CFO Craig Hallworth on Producing in a Copper Bull Market

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the senior vice president and CFO of Gunnison Copper (TSX: GCU)(OTC: GCUMF), Mr. Craig Hallworth. Craig, it's great to have you on. How are you today, sir?

Craig Hallworth: Hi, Gerardo. Thank you so much for that warm welcome. I'm very excited to be on the show, and looking forward to talking about this.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, let's get right to it. You and I had a very brief conversation off-air, which I immediately cut off because I wanted to capture the enthusiasm on the record, right? And we were talking of course of the copper space, and more specifically the copper space here domestically in the US and North America.

And look, with the futures copper price running towards the $5 mark, the spot price running towards the $4.50 mark, and Gunnison being headquartered here in the US, I couldn't think of a better time to have you on, and I definitely want to talk about the recent news. But before we get that, I have to get your take on the copper space.

Craig Hallworth: It's a really exciting time to be in copper in the United States. I mean, we've seen some real tailwinds the last few years under the previous administration, the Biden administration. I think everyone was very pleasantly surprised with the Inflation Reduction Act with the stimulus for clean energy for the designation of copper as a critical material for energy and all that stimulus.

And actually, we benefited from that stimulus. The Department of Energy awarded us 13.9 million US for our Johnson Camp Mine that we're constructing with Nuton and that'll be producing copper next year.

So we benefited greatly from the Biden administration. We're thankful for that, but we're really looking forward to seeing what the Trump administration's going to do. I mean, there's been a lot of news lately about tariffs, and really everything that he's doing is to stimulate production of goods in the United States.

And copper is used in a wide variety of industries, a wide variety of products, but really specifically, I think energy, defense, and manufacturing, those are the big ones that we're targeting with our product, with our copper. And we'll be producing up to 25 million pounds of finished copper cathode per year, starting later this year when Johnson Camp Mine goes into production. So we're really, really excited to be selling that domestically, everything 100% into the US supply chains for those industries.

And like you said, we've seen the copper price really running up on the COMEX, the US copper specifically. The price is really running up and we're seeing premiums for the delivery of finished copper that we haven't seen in years, 40 cents, even higher. And that's something that's going to accrue to us as a 100% made in America copper company.

Gerardo Del Real: I couldn't have said it better. I'm glad I asked the question. Let's get to Gunnison specifically, and you outlined it and you summarized it well, but the recent transaction that included $3 million in non-dilutive funding from Nuton, which is of course a Rio Tinto venture, right? We've seen other companies benefit greatly from that partnership. One that I'm a shareholder of that comes to mind immediately is Aldebaran Resources. And so can you speak about that transaction and why this partnership is so important?

Craig Hallworth: Well, I think if you look at Nuton, I mean, that's an amazing company and they're really, I believe, leading the way in sulfide leaching technology.

So if anyone's not familiar with that, I personally think that sulfide leaching is sort of a holy grail that's been sought for many decades in this industry, and I think the technology is finally getting to the point where it's going to be successful and it's going to be replacing a lot of concentrators, those billion-dollar concentrators, I think it's going to be replacing a lot of those in projects in the future because the CapEx, the OpEx is much, much cheaper with the sulfide leaching approach, and you can make that finished copper right there domestically. You don't have to send concentrates overseas. So I think it's got a lot of great benefits in that technology.

Now, just going back to Nuton, before I joined this company, I talked to a lot of really smart people in metallurgy, and they all tell me that Nuton technology is the one that's going to deliver this promise of sulfide leaching. And that was a big reason why I joined this company, to see it demonstrated at the Johnson Camp Mine.

But to go back and specifically address your question, Gunnison project, it's an 18-year mine life that's mostly an oxide resource that will be processed using conventional heap leach. So 90% of the economics in our PEA, which was a 1.3 billion US NPV by the way, 90% of those economics are from oxide and traditional leaching.

But what we're really excited about is that underneath the oxide is a sulfide layer that we know about today, and we think that sulfide layer is going to be a lot deeper with a lot more sulfides with further drilling. The reason why only the layer, the top layer is known today is that in the previous configuration for Gunnison, which was under in situ leaching, the drilling that happened to infill that resource, essentially they couldn't recover sulfide copper under that technology, so what they did was they just stopped drilling when they hit that layer.

So I think we're going to see a lot more sulfide in there, and that's what Nuton thinks too. Nuton thinks there's going to be a lot more sulfide, and that's why they're interested. That's why they're interested in testing their technology on that Gunnison sulfide.

You said you had an investment in one of their other projects that they're interested in. They've done over a dozen investments, and the first thing they do is they test to make sure that their technology is going to work. And so what this could be setting us up for is a possible future investment in Gunnison.

Gerardo Del Real: There's a lot to like, 2025 is going to be a roller coaster of a year. I think for us in the commodity space and specifically with copper, I think we're in for a heck of a rest of the year. Anything to add to that, Craig?

Craig Hallworth: I just want to point out for investors out there that we have something called the High Value Work Program. And this is opportunities that we uncovered when we did the Gunnison PEA study that we released last Q4.

What we're doing is instead of waiting for the pre-feasibility study that, like I mentioned, we're planning to start later this year and complete by the end of 2026, we decided to take the studies and the work that we need to do to advance those opportunities and pull it forward and basically spend very targeted dollars.

It's only going to cost us $3 million. We'll be able to develop the opportunities of potentially selling the gravel and the limestone overburden that we think has a market value of looking into with further testing or sorting technology which we've seen successfully used at a mine in Kentucky, we're going to be doing some drill work and some new core samples, and we'll be sending that to the company in Kentucky that's doing it today for analysis.

And what that ore sorting could unlock is a significantly lower acid consumption, because what it can do is reduce the amount of waste or low copper grade ore that actually gets sent to the heap leach. So we're looking to do all of these studies, very targeted spending, and we hope to have them completed within the next three to six months, providing a very near-term set of catalysts for investors entering the stock today.

Gerardo Del Real: Exciting times. I think you positioned yourselves perfectly to catch the sweet spot of this cycle, what I think is going to be a very, very profitable copper cycle. Craig, thank you so much for your time. I'm looking forward to catching back up and seeing those 2025 catalysts continue to materialize for y'all.

Craig Hallworth: Thank you so much, Gerardo. I love your show, and thank you so much for having me on.

Gerardo Del Real: Appreciate the kind words. Anytime. Take care.

Click here to see more from Gunnison Copper