Halo Minerals (AIM:HALO), the AIM-listed copper development company focused on recovering critical minerals from legacy mining waste, said an updated Competent Person's Report for its Playa Verde copper tailings project in Chile has increased the Ore Reserve by 5.4% to 33.94 million tonnes.
The report, prepared by EMI-Ingenieros y Consultores, supports an after-tax net present value (at a 10% discount rate) of $174.3 million and an after-tax internal rate of return of approximately 46% on the Ore Reserve alone.
Playa Verde, in Chile's Chañaral district, is Halo's principal asset: a project to recover copper and gold from historic mining waste rather than through primary hard-rock mining, and one the company has been advancing toward a final investment decision targeted for the end of 2026.
The Ore Reserve increase of 1.74 million tonnes, to a grade of 0.25% copper containing 83,626 tonnes of in-situ fine copper, came from recategorising Measured and Indicated Resources into the extraction plan without altering the mine-plan envelope. Total Mineral Resources, which are inclusive of Ore Reserves rather than additive to them, now stand at 53.44 million tonnes at 0.24% copper, containing 127,911 tonnes of in-situ fine copper.
A separate full-resource management case, built on the entire 53.44 million tonne onshore resource rather than the declared reserve, produces an after-tax net present value of $267.5 million and an after-tax internal rate of return of 48%.
Identified capital expenditure and reagent-cost savings lift the after-tax net present value further, to $190.6 million for the Ore Reserve case and $295.5 million for the full-resource case.
The Ore Reserve base case assumes a copper price of $6.20 per pound, gold at $3,700 per ounce, initial capital expenditure of $92.8 million and overall copper recovery of 72%, which is the same capital figure disclosed in Halo's Class 3 engineering update prepared with BIOS Mining & Infrastructure.
EMI has identified preliminary potential to increase Ore Reserves by a further 25% to 30%, which would take the figure to approximately 42.4 million to 44.1 million tonnes, subject to infill drilling, block-model updates and confirmation of modifying factors.
"The declared Ore Reserve has increased to 33.94 million tonnes and, on that Ore Reserve alone, the updated work supports an after-tax NPV10 of US$174.3 million and an after-tax IRR of approximately 46%," said chief executive Andrew Dennan, who added that the costed opportunities "demonstrate the potential to deliver a project NPV10 in the orders of magnitude of around $300 million."
Dennan also pointed to a longer-term ambition to incorporate surf and bay zones adjacent to the project, which the company says could significantly increase the resource base, to be modelled "at an appropriate time in the future."
Halo said it is now focused on completing remaining optimisation, commercial and financing work to progress Playa Verde toward a final investment decision, with study planning assumptions supporting a potential October 2028 start-up.
