Namibia's Tschudi Copper Mine Plans to Resume Open-Pit Mining in Early 2027

en.Wedoany.com Reported - Consolidated Copper Corp (CCC) plans to resume open-pit mining operations at the Tschudi copper mine in northern Namibia in early 2027, with restart development capital estimated at US$30 million to US$40 million. The company is currently completing the definitive feasibility study for the heap leach mining restart, with completion planned for September 2026. Under the current plan, after mining resumes, the target is a steady annual production of more than 14,000 tonnes of copper cathode, with an initial mine life of approximately 10 years.

Tschudi uses open-pit mining, heap leaching, and solvent extraction-electrowinning (SX/EW) processes. The mine's existing SX/EW processing facility has a capacity of 2.88 million tonnes per year, and supporting infrastructure including the office area, maintenance workshop, fuel storage, and grid connection remains usable. The restart capital is mainly for pit dewatering, mobilization of mining equipment, mobile crushing facilities, and construction of new heap leach pads.

Tschudi was previously built and commissioned in 2015 and produced approximately 75,000 tonnes of copper cathode cumulatively through 2020, after which it entered care and maintenance. After CCC took over, processing of existing stockpiled ore resumed in 2024, and as of June 2026, more than 7,600 tonnes of London Metal Exchange Grade A copper cathode had been produced from existing materials. The 2027 restart plan corresponds to the resumption of open-pit mining, not the first resumption of production at the processing end.

As of June 30, 2026, the Tschudi project's JORC mineral resource is 109.5 million tonnes at an average copper grade of 0.75%; of this, the resource constrained by reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction is 46.3 million tonnes. This resource represents a significant expansion from 38 million tonnes at an average grade of 0.82% in 2021, mainly reflecting results from approximately 50,000 meters of drilling carried out after CCC took over, which extended the orebody along strike and at depth.

Under the restart plan, open-pit mining will resume in phases, with mining planned using 90-tonne rigid haul trucks and 200-tonne excavators. At the same time, CCC is also studying an expansion plan for Tschudi's sulfide ore, which would increase the open-pit mining and stripping scale and build a 3 million tonnes per year flotation plant to operate in parallel with the existing SX/EW system; under the expansion scenario, the company aims to increase average annual copper-equivalent production to approximately 30,000 tonnes.