Hudbay’s US properties are the Copper World Complex, located in Arizona, and the Mason project, located in Nevada.
The Copper World deposits were discovered in 2021 and are located predominately on our wholly owned patented mining claims adjacent to our East deposit. The discovery drill program was initiated in 2020 to confirm historic drilling and after receiving encouraging results, we launched a larger drill program in 2021 which results in an initial mineral resource estimate.
Hudbay has been acquiring additional private land in the area to support an operation entirely on private land. The company now holds approximately 4,500 acres of private land and patented mining claims, which is enough to support the first 16 years of production at the Copper World Complex.
Following the recent exploration success on patented mining claims and ongoing litigation uncertainty regarding the project design set forth in the 2017 feasibility study for the East deposit, Hudbay began to evaluate alternative design options to unlock value within this prospective district in Arizona. This led to the release of a robust preliminary economic study for the Copper World Complex in June 2022. The study contemplates a two-phased mine plan with the first phase reflecting a standalone operation with processing infrastructure on Hudbay’s private land and mining occurring on patented mining claims. The second phase is expected to require only state and local permits and reflects a 16-year mine life. Phase two extends the mine life to 44 years through an expansion onto federal land to mine the entire deposits and would be subject to the federal permitting process.
The Mason deposit, acquired in late 2018, is one of the largest undeveloped copper resources in the Americas. It is similar in scale to Constancia and Hudbay released a robust preliminary economic study on Mason in April 2021.