The following is a transcription of the above video, and The Market Online has edited it for clarity.
Midnight Sun Mining Corp. (TSXV:MMA) is an exploration company focused on its flagship Solwezi Project in the heart of the Zambia-Congo Copper Belt.
Here to answer our questions and keep us up to date is Midnight Sun’s director of marketing and communications, Adrian O’Brien.
TMO: The last time we spoke, Adrian, we talked about the massive property Midnight Sun has in the heart of Zambia. For those who missed our last discussion, who is situated near you and what target of yours is of particular interest at the moment?
O’Brien: The property is really uniquely located in that in Zambia there’s kind of a traditional Copper belt known as the Zambia Congo Copper Belt. It runs from the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo) down through Zambia, but then there’s another area called the Domes Region and that’s where we’re situated. So that runs east to west, and it’s basically a belt that hosts billion-ton copper deposits. So there’s four or five big, well-known mines in the area.
When you talk about who surrounds us, right next door to us, and I mean six kilometres away is Kansanshi, which is First Quantum’s flagship. You have First Quantum Sentinel Mine, further to the west, Barrick’s Lumwana Mine, which is like ground zero for Barrick’s move to becoming a major copper producer, and then above us you have Ivanhoe’s Kamoa-Kakula and one called Tenke that’s owned by China Molybdenum. They bought that a few years ago for $4 billion.
TMO: You are partnering with KoBold Metals, $15 million over four years. Has there been any recent developments around this, and what will be the first steps in terms of work on site?
O’Brien: So KoBold of course, is kind of a newer player, right? They’re an AI mining company that’s come in the last couple of years, really, really bleeding edge, exciting. They’re using new technology, novel technology, AI combined with traditional geoscience in order to expedite the development of assets. And so they’ve taken on projects all over the world, but this is kind of their flagship copper exploration property.
But they’ve built the absolute best geological team and so we’re a few weeks into the deal being announced. We’ve started now to dig into what does the actual geological approach look like, and it’s being led by David Broughton. And if you don’t know David Broughton, David’s probably the top set copper expert in the world. And he’s leading this program. He’s built an absolute top-notch team of the best geologists out there, and so David’s leading the way.
They’ve just sort of shown us what their plan is. It’s aggressive. They’re getting ready to drill. They have two drill rigs ready to go. Their plan is to basically attack this thing. It’s drill ready. So we don’t need to do a lot of preliminary work, and they have a really aggressive drill approach. So we’re getting close.
It was a rainy season in Zambia, and that makes it very difficult to move rigs across the ground. It’s not that there’s a lot of rain days today, but they’re in the process now. We’re waiting for the ground to dry out. We’re waiting for rainy season to end and be gone, get back to the beautiful 75-degree weather in Zambia and get the drilling underway.
TMO: Briefly we talked about the new science that is going into developing these targets. Can you recap the significance of this?
O’Brien: I think if you look at the approach that KoBold is taking, so in particular they’re working on a project. If you look at our entire project, just to slightly digress here, we have four big individual targets.
So the property is essentially split up into four pieces. Each of those targets has the potential to be one of these billion-ton domes region deposits but basically they’re focused on something called Dumbwa, and the deal that we struck with them is just for Dumbwa.
The rest of the property remains with Midnight Sun, and we’re going to advance that on our own. But Dumbwa itself is a 20-kilometre-long soil anomaly, which that fact in itself is exciting, but it gets up to 0.73 per cent copper in soil. So the entire property is covered in a blanket of soil, if you will, and to find trace copper is usually a good pathfinder to something bigger going on.
In this case, the average grade of each mine across the domes region is 0.59 per cent copper spread across all of them. We have ore grade 0.73 per cent copper in soil across this anomaly, which is pretty spectacular. So KoBold is basically utilizing that. That’s their pathfinder. They know this is the target they want to attack, and so they have a big drill plan for that.
TMO: Do you think this is one of the best times investors can get in on Midnight Sun? And if so, why?
O’Brien: Well, I think it’s the best time to be investing in copper in general. Certainly we’re going to be obviously very biased and say it’s the best time to invest in Midnight Sun.
If you’re looking for something in the copper space, first of all, copper, there’s a new demand for copper that we’ve never seen before, That’s right on the horizon, right? So you’re probably, let’s say 18 months out from seeing a new phase in copper that’s going to be driven by electrification. That’s going to give us a couple of decades probably of runway where you’re going to see demand for copper like we’ve never seen before.
Never in my lifetime, never in your lifetime. Huge demand for copper and what you really have to look at is not just a demand for copper based on electrification. That is certainly the driver, but you have to look at copper projects globally.
So you have a lack of new projects coming on stream. You have a lack of discoveries being made and the discoveries that are being made are typically porphyry deposits. They’re typically now, I like to say the low-hanging fruits been picked. So the easy ones to find have been found.
Now we’re into these projects that are really deep, they’re really expensive, and we’re talking CapEx (capital expenditures) that’s beyond what any junior could probably ever tackle. So huge CapEx, tough jurisdictions, they’re very deep and you have to look for projects that are quicker to get into the pipeline of development, that are going to be able to reach production stage more quickly and that are probably lower CapEx, so meaning open pit, and then you have to think about jurisdiction. If you look at Midnight Sun, you have jurisdiction.
In Zambia, 75 per cent of their export earnings are copper, totally mining-centric country. You’ve got every big player in the picture. You’ve got First Quantum, Barrick, Rio (Tinto), Anglo (American), now KoBold. You’ve got Ivanhoe just north of us in the DRC, which is a much tougher jurisdiction.
So you’ve got jurisdiction. What kind of scale are you dealing with? Well, every deposit pretty well in that region is a billion tons. So you have copper deposits that are at the very, very highest end of the spectrum.
The grade is there, the geological makings are there and then you have four or five of the biggest mines in Africa surrounding you, certainly Kansanshi being the top African copper mine and you then can think about runway to development. You’re not looking at something that’s going to need 10 years to move towards production, and we have to arm wave that we’re going to build a mine.
Midnight Sun will never build a mine. That’s not our goal. That’s not our plan, but you have all these mines in the region that could certainly take advantage of that and if somebody finds something big enough on our property, or if we find something big enough on our property that we actually think it warrants a standalone mine, that’s something to be figured out at that point but we don’t need to aim for that. So it’s really the right thing to be looking for in the copper space.
TMO: I imagine the company has some major plans going into this year. What are some of the things that you’re most looking forward to?
O’Brien: It’s certainly got to go in drilling. I think for us right now, we’ve waited a long time to see what Dumbwa is made of. Dumbwa is a fantastic target. It’s unique, it’s high grade, it has all the makings of a really exciting story.
We still have three other targets to go and drill. We have KoBold, we have the excitement around that, we’re pumped to be partnered with them. I mean, as I said, they’re bleeding edge. They’re doing things that nobody else has really ever done. They’re moving forward.
We have the amazing geological team but a big drill program at Dumbwa is going to be super exciting for us, and then we’re making our own plans now to attack something else that we have, which is oxide. You sort of have copper oxide in the top part of the stratigraphy and sulfide deposits down deep, right? So we’re looking for these big sulfide deposits.
We also have oxides, and now we’re looking at an approach to doing that. So we’re looking for funding, and we’re going to go out and start chasing oxides and see if we can put a resource together that would create a near-term mining situation.
You can find Midnight Sun Mining Corp. on the CSE under the symbol “MMA” or head to its website at midnightsunmining.com for more information.
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