Excelsior Mining has been issued an amended aquifer protection permit from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality for the Johnson Camp mine, another regulatory milestone for the Canadian company as it prepares to start construction on its nearby Gunnison copper project, an Excelsior official said Tuesday.
J.J. Jennex, spokesman for the Vancouver-based company, said that copper cathode will be transported from Gunnison to a processing facility a mile away at Johnson Camp. The facility has a processing capability of about 25 million lb of copper cathode annually.
The 9,560-acre Gunnison mine site is located in Cochise County, about 65 miles southeast of Tucson.
Excelsior recently received a draft operating permit for Gunnison from the Arizona state agency. The company still needs a final state permit and an underground injection control permit from the US Environmental Protection Agency.
It hopes to have both permits in place by late September and to commence construction at Gunnison before the end of 2017. Commercial production is expected in 2018.
"We've always had our eyes on Johnson Camp," Jennex said. Excelsior purchased the property on December 15, 2015, through a court-appointed receiver for Nord Resources.
The Johnson Camp mine has a long history, dating to the 1880s. Mining operations there ceased in 2010.
According to Jennex, the Gunnison and Johnson Camp properties have been integrated by his company into a contiguous operation. "It is an open-pit operation," he said about Johnson Camp. "But we're only interested in the processing facilities."
The North Star deposit that will supply Gunnison contains an estimated 4.5 billion lb of probable reserves, the company said.
Arizona is the leading copper-producing state in the US.
