Study by Copper Explorer Returns 81% Copper From Flotation Tailings

Granite Creek Copper Ltd. (GCX:TSX.V; GCXXF:OTCQB) has announced the preliminary results of a metallurgical study designed to increase the recovery of copper from oxide material at its Carmacks copper-gold-silver project in Yukon, Canada.

Kemetco Research Inc. has been contracted to conduct an initial series of scoping tests to evaluate the potential for extracting and recovering copper from unrecovered copper oxide minerals in the Carmacks project flotation tailings, as referenced in the company's 2023 preliminary economic assessment.

Testing involves the leaching of tailings from the previous flotation testing of oxidized copper material to dissolve copper into a solution and subsequently precipitate copper in a form that could be added to a concentrate being produced by sulfide flotation.

Bob Moriarty highlighted the company's record of success in drilling and the company's excellent position as it is prepared to move to production while the copper market heats up.

The leaching portion of the test work has now been completed, with up to 81% of the copper present in the test samples going into solution.

The remaining project task, currently underway at Kemetco, is to complete a series of bench tests to evaluate methods for selective recovery of the leached copper from the solution.

The planned tests will focus on copper sulfide precipitation to target a generation of a high-grade copper sulfide product that could potentially be combined with a copper flotation concentrate in an overall production flowsheet, resulting in significant potential increases to both overall copper recovery and the copper grade of the final concentrate product.

Copper Declard Critical By DOE

Copper has been officially declared a critical mineral by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) after a long campaign. Its inclusion on the list of critical minerals comes at a critical time, as the market indicates has highlighted a possible 6 million ton shortage of copper in the next five to ten years.

According to the World Bank, copper production for the next 20 years needs to be equal to humanity's copper production for the past 5,000 years.

Rick Mills of Ahead of the Herd identified copper as one of the three metals essential to decarbonization.

According to Mills, "millions of feet of copper wiring will be required for strengthening the world's power grids, and hundreds of thousands of tons more are needed to build wind and solar farms. Electric vehicles use triple the amount of copper as gasoline-powered cars." In other words, demand for copper is going to shoot up as we build a carbon-free future.

An Easy Call

Bob Moriarty of 321 Gold said of the company, "Granite Creek is a really easy call. As of today, the company has a CA$22 million market cap with CA$1 million in cash and CA$500,000 in callable warrants. 

In addition, there are a bunch of CA$0.15 warrants expiring in January 2022, so the company is well cashed up."

Moriarty highlighted the company's record of success in drilling and the company's excellent position as it is prepared to move to production while the copper market heats up.

Ownership and Share Structure

Management and insiders own 5.71% of the company. Timothy Johnson owns 2.54% of the company with 4.08 million shares, Robert Sennott owns 1.84% with 2.96 million shares, Michael Victor Rowley owns 1.07% with 1.71 million shares, and John Charles Richard Cumming owns 0.26% with 0.42 million shares.

There are 160.77 million shares outstanding, with 151.59 million free-float traded shares. The company has a market cap of CA$8.0 million. It trades in the 52-week period between CA$0.05 and CA$0.11.

Important Disclosures:

1. Granite Creek Copper is a billboard sponsor of Streetwise Reports and pays SWR a monthly sponsorship fee between US$4,000 and US$5,000. 
2. Amanda Duvall wrote this article for Streetwise Reports LLC and provides services to Streetwise Reports as an employee. 
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