Capstone Copper Stock

Capstone Copper Corp. (Capstone Copper) operates as a premier copper producer operating in the Americas.

From exploration to mine development to operations, the company is focused on creating growth and generating value for its investors, employees and communities as the company meets the surging global copper demand.

With a portfolio of long-life operating assets in safe jurisdictions and a pipeline of fully permitted projects, the company’s employees and contractors in Canada, Chile, the U.S. and Mexico is well positioned to deliver the clean, ethical copper the world needs as the company transition to a net-zero future.

Operations

Capstone Copper has a portfolio of long-life copper operations in the Americas and a fully permitted development project in one of the world’s most prolific copper-producing districts. The company is well positioned to create near-term growth as the company makes its operating mines more profitable, and execute on the company’s strategy of transformational growth as the company builds the next generation of responsible copper mines.

Pinto Valley

Pinto Valley is an open-pit mine located at the west end of the historic Globe-Miami mining district of central Arizona, one of the oldest and most productive districts in the U.S., approximately 80 miles east of Phoenix via Highway 60. Several mines and numerous prospects have been developed in the area. Larger mines in the district are porphyry copper deposits associated with Paleocene granodiorite to Granite Porphyry stocks.

The operation consists of an open-pit mine, a 60,000 tonnes per day (‘tpd’) concentrator plant and a 25,000 tpd SX-EW plant. Pinto Valley is the only operating mill and the second-largest employer in the Globe-Miami district.

The mine uses conventional open-pit hard rock mining methods (drilling, blasting, loading and hauling) to move copper-bearing sulphide ore to the primary crusher. The processing plant is a conventional porphyry copper concentrator that produces a primary copper sulphide concentrate and a by-product molybdenum concentrate. The plant flowsheet is typical of its era with primary through tertiary crushing, ball milling and conventional flotation. The mill has undergone several optimizations during its life.

The mine received a new U.S. Forest Service Mine Plan of Operations in November 2021 and is fully permitted to operate for the duration of the current life of mine plan, which extends to 2039.

Pinto Valley is progressing a district growth study evaluating the inclusion of a portion of the one billion tonnes of Mineral Resources into the mine plan. This study could result in a mine life extension through 2050. Pinto Valley is also evaluating near-mine district consolidation opportunities in one of the most prolific mining jurisdictions in the United States.

Pinto Valley is also evaluating other new technologies, such as Autonomous Trucking.

Pinto Valley is a copper porphyry deposit. The primary host rock is the Precambrian-age Lost Gulch Quartz Monzonite (equivalent to the Oracle Granite or Ruin Granite). The deposit’s economic mineralization is a hypogene ore body with chalcopyrite, pyrite, and minor molybdenite as the only significant primary sulfide minerals.

Copper Cities (BHP Copper Inc.) – The Globe-Miami mining district is host to several deposits and past-producing mining operations. In 2022, the company completed a two-phase exploration program under an access agreement to conduct drill and metallurgical test work at BHP Copper Inc’s Copper Cities project, located approximately 10 km east of the Pinto Valley Mine. Drilling with two surface rigs twinning historical drill holes was completed in 2022, with metallurgical testing continuing in 2023.

Cozamin

Cozamin is a copper-silver underground mine with a surface milling facility, located 3.6 km north-northwest of Zacatecas City in the mineral-rich state of Zacatecas, Mexico.

Cozamin is in the Morelos Municipality of the Zacatecas Mining District, near the south-eastern boundary of the Sierra Madre Occidental Physiographic Province, in north-central Mexico. The area is characterized by rounded northwest trending mountains with the Sierra Veta Grande to the north and the Sierra de Zacatecas to the south. The mine is accessible via paved roads and excellent surrounding infrastructure includes schools, hospitals, railroads and electrical power.

Cozamin is an underground operation that has been continuously operated under Capstone since late 2006, when it commenced commercial production at a rate of 1,000 tonnes per day (‘tpd’). At the time, it had a three-year mine life in reserve and successful exploration has extended the life of the mine to 2030.

The mine plan at Cozamin is based on a combination of longhole stoping and cut-and-fill mining methods. The mine plan contemplates using 10.2 million tonnes of ore from 2023 to 2030 (only Mineral Reserves included in the plan).

Construction of the new paste backfill plant was completed late in 2022 and ramped up in 2023. Approximately half of the filtered tailings are combined with cement to form a paste and pumped underground to be used as mine backfill, allowing for increased copper ore extraction.

The Zacatecas Mining District covers a belt of epithermal and mesothermal vein deposits that contain silver, gold and base metals (copper, lead and zinc). The district is in the Southern Sierra Madre Occidental Physiographic Province near the boundary with the Mesa Central Physiographic Province in north-central Mexico. The district occurs in a structurally complex setting, associated with siliceous subvolcanic and volcanic rocks underlain by sedimentary and meta-sedimentary rocks.

Cozamin’s dominant mineralized vein systems include the Mala Noche Vein (‘MNV’) and the Mala Noche Foot Wall Zone (‘MNFWZ)’.

Mantos Blancos

Mantos Blancos is an open-pit mine located in the Antofagasta region of Chile, within a one-hour drive of port facilities at Antofagasta and Mejillones, and the Glencore-owned Altonorte copper smelter. There is no on-site accommodation as all staff live off-site, mainly in the city of Antofagasta. The operation mines and processes both sulphide and oxide ores. Following the completion and current ramp up of the Mantos Blancos Concentrator Debottlenecking Development Project (‘MBCDP’, or ‘Mantos Blancos Expansion’), the mine will primarily treat sulphide ore in an expanded concentrator.

Mantos Blancos Phase II represents the mine’s next leg of growth, which is analyzing the potential to further increase the concentrator plant’s throughput to at least 27 thousand tonnes per day, by utilizing existing and unused or underutilized process equipment. The plan also includes extending cathode production beyond the current plan to use the existing 60,000 tonnes per year cathode capacity.

Mantos Blancos is a copper-silver deposit located in the Coastal Range of northern Chile, which is an important geomorphological feature because it hosts Cu-Ag-Au stratabound deposits along an early Cretaceous metallogenic belt. The deposit is mainly characterized by pyroclastic and intrusive host rock units. The pyroclastic rock units are mainly andesite, dacite and rhyolite. The geometry of the mineralized bodies is irregular lenses and oxidized copper sulphides

Mantoverde

Mantoverde is an open-pit mine located in the Atacama region of Chile. It is consisted of four pits situated along the Mantoverde fault, each of which contains both sulphide and oxide ores. Mantoverde processes only the oxide ore. Mining is performed using truck-and-shovel technology.

Mantoverde is an open-pit mine mine located in the province of Chañaral, Atacama Region, 56 kilometers southeast of the city of Chañaral and 100 kilometers north of the city of Copiapó, at an altitude of approximately 900 masl.

Mantoverde operates heap and dump run of mine (‘ROM’) leaching and conventional SX-EW to treat oxide ore to produce 35,000 to 40,000 tonnes per year of high-purity LME Grade ‘A’ copper cathodes. The mine consists of four pits situated along the Mantoverde fault, each of which contains both sulphide and oxide ores.

The mine owns a desalination plant, located approximately 40 kilometers west of the mine that supplies all the water required by the operation with 120 liters per second. The plant was expanded to supply 380 liters per second to sustain the mine’s expanded operations after completion of the Mantoverde Development Project (‘MVDP’) in late 2023.

The MVDP is expected to increase production from approximately 35,000 tonnes of copper (cathodes only) in 2022 to a run-rate of approximately 120,000 tonnes of copper in H2 2024. A new concentrator plant will treat sulphide material to produce copper concentrate while oxide ores will continue to be treated in the existing SX-EW plant. Mining assumes conventional open pit operations using truck-and-shovel technology.

The MVDP consists of processing sulphide ores in a concentrator with a capacity of 12.3 Mt per year. Construction was completed in late 2023. MVDP is progressing under a lump-sum turn-key engineering, procurement and construction (‘EPC’) contract with Ausenco Limited.

The company is analyzing the next expansion of the sulphide concentrator. The company has identified that the desalination plant capacity and major components of the comminution and flotation circuits of the Mantoverde Development Project are capable of sustaining average annual throughput of up to 45,000 tonnes per day with no major capital equipment upgrades. The company continues to work with Ausenco’s engineering team to develop the Optimized Mantoverde Development Project (‘MVDP Optimized’), including evaluating the costs and timelines of debottlenecking the minor components of the plant to meet the potential throughput target. The Feasibility Study is on track for completion late in H1 2024.

Mantoverde Phase II will evaluate the addition of an entire second processing line, possibly a duplication of the first line, to process some of the additional 77% of resources not utilized by MVDP Optimized. Activities are focused on understanding the optimum concentrator capacity and mine plan, along with the implications to the timing and permitting for the project.

The Mantoverde deposit is a typical iron oxide–copper–gold (IOCG) deposit located within the Atacama Fault System. It is located in an ancient mining district with numerous Fe, Fe-Cu-Au, Au and Mn deposits in the southern sector of the Atacama Fault System within the Cretaceous iron belt. Copper mineralization is oxidized down to approximately 200 m depth and two types of oxidized copper ores are recognized. The breccias in the sloping fault block contain abundant haematite with brochantite, minor antlerite, chrysocolla, malachite and atacamite, which occur in veinlets, patches and disseminated in the specularite matrix.

Santo Domingo

The fully-permitted Santo Domingo copper-iron project is located near the town of Diego de Almagro in the Atacama region in Chile, approximately 35 kilometers northeast of Capstone’s Mantoverde mine and 130 kilometers north-northeast of the city of Copiapó.

The company’s Mantoverde-Santo Domingo District Integration Plan, intends to unlock the potential to produce over 200,000 tonnes per year of copper production with the option to also develop one of the largest and lowest cost battery-grade cobalt producers in the world, outside of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Santo Domingo deposits are located within the Cretaceous Iron Belt (‘CIB’) of the Atacama fault zone. The CIB is a segment of the Atacama fault zone approximately 630 km by 40 km in dimension that hosts numerous iron oxide–copper–gold (IOCG) type deposits. The deposits lie on the east side of the Atacama fault complex, which, in this area, consists of numerous clusters of generally north–south structural breaks in a belt approximately 30 km wide.

An exploration program completed in 2021 totaling 8,500 m confirmed the extension of the mineralized sequence between the Santo Domingo and Iris Norte pits. A new geological model and mineral resource is underway and will be announced with the Santo Domingo Feasibility Study in H2 2023.