COBRE PANAMA

Overview

With 3.1 billion tonnes of proven and probable reserves, Cobre Panama is one of the largest new copper mines opened globally in the past decade. Located in Colon Province, 120km west of Panama City, the production complex includes two open pits, a processing plant, two 150 megawatt power stations and a port.

Commercial production started in 2019 and at full current capacity, the plant will process 85Mtpa of ore to produce more than 300,000 tonnes of copper per year along with gold, silver and molybdenum.

Cobre Panama will employ about 3,500 people, primarily Panamanians, and utilize state-of-the-art technology and infrastructure to extract copper with world-class efficiency.

Following a corporate acquisition in 2013, First Quantum assumed an 80 per cent equity interest in Minera Panamá, S.A. (“MPSA”), the Panamanian company that holds the Cobre Panama concession.

In November 2017, First Quantum increased its ownership interest in MPSA to 90 per cent.

Mining and Processing

Cobre Panama comprises a series of copper porphyry deposits The main deposits are Balboa, Botija, Colina and Valle Grande. There are also a number of smaller mineralized zones; the most significant being Brazo and Botija Abajo. The operation has a 34-year mine life.

Mining is open-pit, using a fleet of ultraclass electric shovels and ultraclass haul trucks. Four in-pit semi-mobile primary crushers feed two overland conveyors to the secondary crushers and main processing complex. The three 28 megawatt SAG mills and four 16.5 megawatt ball mills installed at Cobre Panama are the largest installed anywhere in the world, except for Sentinel. Copper sulphides are concentrated by flotation, and concentrates are delivered by slurry pipeline from the main processing plant to the filter plant co-located at our purpose-built port facility on the Caribbean. Tailings are stored and water is reclaimed from our centreline-construction Tailings Storage Facility.

The project is powered by a 300 megawatt power generation plant located at the port.