Gunnison Copper Corp (TSX:GCU, OTCQB:GCUMF) senior vice president of operations Robert Winton talked with Proactive about major progress at the Johnson Camp mine and upcoming developments for the Gunnison Project. Winton confirmed that production systems at Johnson Camp are now running, with the SX plant starting on July 31 and the electroplating facility activated on August 2. The company is on track to complete its first copper sale in September.
Proactive: We want an update on what’s going on at the Johnson Camp mine. A lot of good work is being done there, and it’s getting close to the end of the line, so to speak.
Robert Winton: Yes, it’s been a journey. It’s been about a year of intense work with our partners at Nuton to bring the latest producer of American copper back into the market. We started our SX plant on July 31 this year. Two days later, given the amount of copper coming at us, we had to get our electroplating plant up and running. That’s the final step in making copper from an ore body. The electricity was turned on August 2. It’s very exciting times at Johnson Camp. Production is now measured in weeks before we can bring that to market.
So is it a bit of testing now to make sure everything’s flowing and moving the way it should before you get to that point?
Because we had run the plant before, those processes are well in hand and well understood. Within the SX-EW plant, the first test of things that can cause operational challenges are stripping machines — these peel the copper off the starter sheets. They can be finicky. In a couple of weeks, when we fire that up again, we’ll work through those growing pains. Each strip cycle will produce over 100,000 pounds of copper. We’ll get that tested and ready for a truck to deliver into the U.S. market.
And the first copper sale is still expected in September, correct?
That is correct. We are expecting and working diligently to get that out the door.
Let’s talk about what happens after that. I know there’s going to be work back on at the Gunnison Project, sort of a transition to that.
Yes, it’s been a fun and exciting year. Johnson Camp has taken up a lot of my efforts and the great team we’ve built on site. But Gunnison is where the value of the organization stands. That project is a large open pit with a $1.3 to $1.4 billion NPV. We’ve been working on increasing its value, including commercialization of gravel and 85 million tons of high-grade limestone. We’d like to put that value into the project and excite our investors with increased revenue. We’re also testing an ore sorting process, which we believe will be a game changer. Being in a skarn deposit means a lot of acid-consuming rock that doesn’t carry copper. If we can separate those using optical processes — which have been successful in the US and globally — we can add significant value to the Gunnison PEA from last November.
With what’s going on at Johnson Camp and the work at Gunnison, especially with copper sales coming soon, that seems to put the company in a different place among your peers.
Yes. That peer conversation has been one we’ve had a lot with investors and bankers. We believe we are devalued compared to our peers. We respect them, but we offer a different story — being a junior producer of pure copper metal into the US domestic market, with a strong project at Gunnison and an unrivalled exploration portfolio in Arizona.
Quotes have been lightly edited for style and clarity