Los Azules

The Los Azules Project is a porphyry copper development project located in the Andes Cordilleran region of San Juan Province, Argentina near the border with Chile. A Preliminary Economic Assessment (scoping study) was completed in 2009 and updated in 2010, 2013 and is now updated with this 2017 PEA update. This 2017 PEA reflects a revised flowsheet and updated economic parameters such as capital and operating costs and new financial model inputs, etc. The Los Azules Project is an open pit mine and concentrator plant that produces a copper concentrate as the final product for export. Ancillary facilities including the Tailings Storage Facility and the Waste Rock Storage Facility have also been updated for optimized development that now minimises the vertical and horizontal material haulage elements, and provides for gravity deposition of the tailings for the life of mine operations. The 2017 PEA also incorporates an updated development strategy of a phased implementation approach with an initial Phase 1 processing rate of 80,000 tons per day increasing by 50% for Phase 2 to 120,000 tonnes per day in Year 5 through to the completion of processing in Year 36. The 2017 updated financial outcomes are: • IRR of 20.1% • NPV of $2.2 billion • Peak capex of $2.4 billion • Payback on investment period of 3.6 years • C1 costs in the first 10 years of $1.11 per pound copper