(Kitco News) - The latest drilling supports the model behind a billion-tonne resource as the world searches for its next generation of large copper mines.
Seven hundred seventy-one meters of mineralization would be the entire headline at most copper projects.
At Mocoa, the more important detail may be that the copper showed up almost exactly where the model said it would.
Copper Giant Resources Corp. (TSXV: CGNT; OTCQB: LBCMF) reported Thursday that directional hole MD-070 returned 771 meters grading 0.54% copper equivalent, or CuEq, at its flagship project in southern Colombia.
The interval began 211 meters downhole and contained 0.33% copper and 0.039% molybdenum. It included 313 meters at 0.71% CuEq, 214 meters at 0.77% and a higher-grade core of 102 meters at 0.87%.
The intervals are reported as downhole lengths. Copper Giant interprets them to be close to true widths because of the broad geometry of the porphyry mineralization.
Those are big numbers. But Mocoa was already big.
The project holds an Inferred resource of 1.12 billion tonnes grading 0.51% CuEq. That represents 12.7 billion pounds of copper-equivalent metal, including approximately 7.7 billion pounds of copper and 1 billion pounds of molybdenum.
What Copper Giant needs now is not another reminder that the system is enormous. It needs evidence that the tonnes and grades inside its model behave predictably when the drill spacing gets tighter.
That was MD-070’s job.
The model meets the drill bit
MD-070 was drilled through the existing resource as an infill hole. Rather than chasing an untested target, it tested an area where Copper Giant already believed mineralization should be present.
The result tracked the model over nearly the entire assayed length and came in slightly above Mocoa’s average resource grade. Several intervals locally exceeded the grades assigned to that part of the block model.
“MD-070 confirms the grade and continuity where it matters for the study,” Frank Giustra, Copper Giant’s principal shareholder and strategic adviser, told Kitco News in an email Thursday.
For investors, that is the point of the hole.
Porphyry deposits are not typically built around narrow veins carrying spectacular grades. Their economics come from moving very large volumes of consistently mineralized rock. A long intercept becomes more meaningful when it demonstrates that the geological model can predict what the drill will encounter.
That model will help shape the mine plan in the preliminary economic assessment Copper Giant expects to deliver in the fourth quarter.
“Each hole is making Mocoa more real: more defined where it needs to be defined, and still open where there is room to grow,” Giustra said.
The second hole points beyond the model
The “still open” part of that equation came from MD-068.
The directional hole was steered beneath a group of vertical holes drilled decades ago by Ingeominas, Colombia’s former geological agency. Those older holes ended at approximately 400 meters, leaving the deeper portion of the southeastern side of Mocoa largely untested.
MD-068 returned 544 meters grading 0.45% CuEq from a depth of 145 meters.
That included an upper interval of 157 meters at 0.69% CuEq and a deeper interval of 154 meters at 0.54% beginning at 526 meters. The hole reached its planned stopping point while it was still in mineralization.
The geology also became more interesting farther down. Copper Giant reported stronger alteration and denser mineralized veining with depth, features commonly associated with moving closer to the hotter core of a porphyry system.
“MD-068 shows the system continuing well below historic drilling in the southeast, with the geology improving at depth,” Giustra said.
Part of that deeper mineralization sits outside the current resource footprint. It gives the company another defined area to test as it considers future expansion of the Mocoa resource.
The two holes perform complementary roles. MD-070 makes the existing model more dependable. MD-068 shows that the model may not yet capture the full system.
Putting the scale in context
Mocoa’s current resource contains copper at an average grade of 0.31% and molybdenum at 0.039%.
When Copper Giant filed the updated resource estimate in January, it had increased the project’s estimated tonnage by 76% from the previous model. Contained copper-equivalent metal more than doubled, while the average grade increased by 14%.
The latest 771-meter interval contained 0.33% copper and 0.039% molybdenum, translating to 0.54% CuEq under the company’s assumptions.
Copper equivalent expresses the estimated value of multiple metals as a single copper grade. Copper Giant calculates it using copper at $4 per pound and molybdenum at $20 per pound, together with estimated recoveries of 90% for copper and 95% for molybdenum.
Molybdenum is therefore an important part of Mocoa’s potential economics, not simply a minor byproduct. The project needs to be understood as a copper-molybdenum system rather than as a pure copper deposit.
Why another giant copper project matters
The timing is difficult to ignore.
Copper demand is expanding across power grids, electric vehicles, data centers, renewable energy and the broader electrification of the global economy. These are markets that require copper in physical volume, not merely as a financial exposure.
The International Energy Agency expects copper to record the largest volume increase among the major critical minerals, adding approximately 7 million tonnes of annual demand through 2040.
Even after including production from announced projects, the agency projects that mined supply could fall roughly 25% short of primary copper requirements in 2035. The projected gap has narrowed as more projects have advanced, but it remains substantial.
A gap of that size will not be closed by a collection of small deposits. The copper market will need large projects capable of operating for decades.
That is the investment case surrounding Mocoa. Its importance is not based on unusually rich rock. It is based on a very large mineralized system, long intervals of consistent grade and the possibility of producing copper and molybdenum at meaningful scale.
“This project is getting bigger and bigger,” Giustra said. “It’s a world-class copper-moly deposit, and there are only a handful of copper projects this size owned by juniors.”
Giustra sees Mocoa’s scale converging with a copper market that will need new, long-life sources of supply.
“The copper supply deficit is real,” he said. “Projects like this one will be put into production. And now we have a very mining-friendly government in Colombia. A perfect storm.”
Capital begins to line up behind the geology
Copper Giant has also begun assembling the capital and commercial relationships needed to move beyond resource definition.
The company recently closed a C$31 million strategic financing. Denarius Metals Corp. supplied C$28.8 million and emerged with a 15.6% interest in Copper Giant. Giustra and Copper Giant CEO Ian Harris also participated.
Commodities trader Trafigura separately agreed to purchase 20% of Mocoa’s future copper concentrate and 20% of its molybdenum concentrate for 10 years after commercial production begins, subject to minimum delivery provisions.
The relationship gives Copper Giant an early commercial connection to one of the world’s largest physical commodity traders. It comes before Mocoa has completed its first economic assessment and well before a potential construction decision.
The financing is intended to support the work that comes after the preliminary assessment, including resource-conversion drilling, geotechnical and hydrogeological studies, environmental programs and broader exploration.
There is still plenty to explore.
At La Estrella, south of the established Mocoa resource, Copper Giant has completed 2,170 meters of drilling and is waiting for assays. The company is testing whether that target is part of a broader mineralized corridor extending beyond Mocoa.
Its use of directional drilling is also allowing more of that work to be completed from existing surface pads.
MD-070 was the second daughter hole drilled from the MD-064 platform. Together, the mother hole and its directional branches have produced close to 6,000 meters of drilling in three directions without requiring another road or drill pad.
That matters in Mocoa’s steep terrain, where every avoided road can reduce cost, save time and limit surface disturbance.
The next number that matters
The next major milestone will not be another long drill intercept. It will be the economics.
Copper Giant launched the Mocoa preliminary economic assessment in May.
The study is expected to provide an initial view of how much of the resource could enter a mine plan, what the project might cost to build, how the processing circuit could be designed and how its economics respond to different copper and molybdenum prices.
“The PEA remains on track for the fourth quarter,” Giustra said.
That assessment will take up the questions drill results cannot settle on their own. The latest holes give the engineers a stronger foundation from which to begin.
MD-070 shows the existing model holding together under closer examination. MD-068 shows the mineralized system continuing into ground where there is still room to add tonnes.
The drilling has already established scale. The PEA is where Mocoa begins the next part of the journey: translating a giant copper system into the outline of a mine.
