This audio is brought to you by Wearcheck, your condition monitoring specialist.

Northern Cape copper company Copper 360 announced on Wednesday that it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with DRDGOLD's Far West Gold Recoveries tailings retreatment company to conduct a due diligence on its copper tailings dams to assess their economic copper recovery viability.During the due diligence period, Far West Gold Recoveries will, through an independent expert, determine the total tonnage of tailings material by Lidar survey applying a density of 1.4 tonnes per cubic metre.Copper 360 estimates that there are about 50-million to 60-million tonnes of dump material with grades varying between 0.18% and 1.5% copper in the dumps, with the potential to contain 450 000 t of copper metal in situ."This potential partnership, if viable, would help us bring more copper to account in such a way that it doesn't distract us from our mining focus," Copper 360 CEO Jan Nelson told Mining Weekly in a Zoom interview following the March 27 news service announcement of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.)During the due diligence, Far West Gold Recoveries will independently assess the economic viability of the copper dumps and if the results are to their satisfaction, the parties will enter into a joint venture agreement. Far West Gold Recoveries will be allowed to acquire 50% interest in the tailings dams at a price to be independently agreed and will become the operator of the dumps, while Copper 360 continues to focus on its many current mining activities, which include commissioning two processing plants at the Rietberg mine and evaluating five new mines."Our expertise and focus are not tailings treatment although we recognise the potential of the copper dumps. It is therefore logical that we have approached the world leaders in dump retreatment to see if a potential partnership could be negotiated to potentially bring these assets to account if the due diligence is viable," it stated in its JSE news service report.Up to now, the tailings dams have been lower on Copper 360's list of priorities because of the huge capital that is required to turn them to account and Copper 360's greater focus on the hard rock potential of its mining licence.But the advance of the copper price and discussions with DRDGOLD have elevated tailings dam retreatment higher up the priority list, especially since the entry of Far West Gold Recoveries allows Copper 360 to keep its eye firmly where it is meant to be.If the due diligence is negative, Copper 360 will simply continue along its aggressive growth path and if it is positive, a significant copper stream will quickly be added to Copper 360's production line."The timing is right and opportunity is right," said Nelson.HISTORICAL TAILINGS BUILD-UPThe O'Kiep, Carolusberg, Lower NamaCopper and Upper NamaCopper tailings dams were brought into the Copper 360 fold by the reverse listing that Shirley Hayes' SHiP Copper did with Nelson's Big Tree Copper ahead of Copper 360's listing on the JSE's AltX in April last year.The tailings emerged from the O'Kiep copper company of 1937 and were deposited by the Nababeep, O'Kiep, Carolusberg mines from about 1940 all the way up to the 1990s.They now provide potential to bring more revenue to the table without Copper 360 having to bear the total capital burden as well as its potential to add more cash flow to the company and a bigger dividend flow to shareholders.The first thing the strategic partnership would bring is technical capability, gleaned over many decades by DRDGOLD in the field of extracting value from dumped mine material."If viable, the partner will then, jointly with us, help to carry the capital cost of a plant like this, which could easily be R500-million to R700-million."We would then not have to carry that alone, and we could maintain our focus on the mining licence, the hard rock, that we're bring...