Company focuses on high-grade deposits — Kookaburra lands

Kookaburra Resources (TSE) has gained control of the Tacaza copper project in southwestern Peru.

The company paid US$50,000 after agreeing to pay a further US$500,000 over 3.5 years to acquire the project outright.

Situated in the St. Lucia district, the project hosts several flat-lying, high-grade copper oxide and supergene-enriched secondary copper sulphide horizons. Kookaburra believes these are amenable to extraction by open-pit mining, heap leaching and solvent extraction-electrowinning (SX-EW). The property is accessible by road and within 20 km of the Santa Lucia railway station. The rail line links the project to the port of Mararani, 360 km away.

Banco Minero, a Peruvian bank specializing in financing for mining, estimates Tacaza’s mineral resource at 4.5 million tonnes grading 4.51% copper. This includes one area with an estimated 1.6 million tonnes grading 6.7% copper and 4.4% lead.

Banco Minero’s estimates are based on underground sampling and have yet to be confirmed by drilling.

Copper mineralization is known to extend well beyond the area studied by Banco Minero, says Kookaburra President Rennie Blair. Consequently, Kookaburra has staked a 21-sq.-km area surrounding the property. Blair notes the vendor had operated a 35-ton-per-day flotation mill on the property about three years ago, selectively mining and processing ore grading in the range of 20% copper.

However, operations ceased after fuel prices increased ten-fold, forcing the vendor to sell the property.

Blair explains that since the potential for copper recovery using SX-EW was not widely recognized at the time, oxide mineralization on the property and surrounding ground was considered a nuisance to flotation and largely ignored. Kookaburra is conducting column leach tests on Tacaza mineralization grading 3.72% copper to provide preliminary figures for acid consumption and recoveries.

Trenching, geological mapping and geophysics will start shortly, to be followed by reverse circulation drilling of at least 100 holes. The company has opened an office in Lima and says it is acquiring more properties.

Blair is not optimistic about copper prices, seeing US90 cents per lb. as a long-term average. He views oxide copper projects with grades in the 0.5% range as marginal and, as a result, is reorganizing the company’s assets to focus only on high-grade projects.

Kookaburra has $5 million in working capital and 13.2 million shares outstanding. It is free of debt.