Carlota / Copper
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Carlota is a high quality copper project in the US, owned and operated by KGHM.
Producing
Copper
KGHM Polska Miedz
USA
Royalty rate and type
5% NSR
Balance sheet classification
Royalty Intangible
As part of the royalty portfolio acquisition from South32, in July 2022, the Group acquired a 5.0% NSR royalty over the Carlota project in the US, owned and operated by KGHM Polska Miedz.
Extraction of copper ore from the Carlota mine is carried out in the form of heap-leaching from the existing ore pads. No mining is currently taking place.
The ore is deposited on heaps for leaching with a sulphuric acid solution. The copper-enriched solution obtained after leaching is processed at the solvent extraction and electrowinning (‘SX-EW’) in order to produce high quality copper cathodes – the final product of the process.
In 2015, the site additionally introduced the subsurface leaching (‘SSL’) system. This solution allowed for the injection of sulphuric acid under low pressure directly into the heap, which in turn allows for the extraction of metal that was originally not fully leached from the ore stored in the last years of production.
Royalty revenues from Carlota totalled $0.2m in 2022. With the open-pit mining having ceased in 2014, Ecora anticipates copper cathode production to continue to decline as heap leach becomes exhausted, and copper production ceases in late 2024 or 2025.