Hudbay Minerals’ Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) on its fully-owned Mason copper project in Nevada, US, estimated the average life of mine (LOM) to be 27 years, with an annual average copper production of 112.3mn mt.
In the first 10 years of the mine, the average annual copper production is expected to be around 138.7mn mt at 90pc copper recovery rates.
Hudbay has projected a measured and indicated mineral resource estimate of 2.2bn mt at the Mason Copper mine at 0.29pc copper grade.
Within the 27 years duration, the mine expects its highest output to be in the first 13 years of the operations and expects production to reduce by half from years 14 to 20. In the remaining seven years the company expects to process rehandled ore from stockpiles.
Currently, the mine’s design allows a throughput of 120,000mt of copper per day, it said in a statement.
Recently, the company announced that it also expects its copper output to increase across its mines in Peru and Canada.