➡ The world’s growing need for electricity and high-tech advancements is increasing the demand for silver and copper, as they are essential for efficient electricity transfer. The demand for these metals is not just a trend, but a necessity for industrial growth, with copper usage growing annually by 2.1% over the last 75 years. This demand is expected to rise even more with the growth of solar power, electric vehicles, and data centers. However, the supply of these metals may not be able to keep up with the increasing demand, potentially leading to a deficit.

➡ The copper industry is facing a significant challenge due to the depletion of existing copper mines and the need for new ones. Over the next decade, we need to produce a million tons of copper per year, which requires a huge investment of $250 billion. However, the availability of suitable sites for new mines is decreasing, making it more expensive and difficult to meet this demand. This situation could lead to an increase in copper prices and create opportunities for companies in the copper industry.

➡ The article discusses the challenges and strategies of dominating a new market, specifically in the mining industry. The author emphasizes the importance of finding large deposits, as smaller projects are less attractive to companies. They also highlight the trend of major companies consolidating and buying production to grow, but warn that this strategy can’t last forever as resources and reserves decrease. The author then discusses their own project, which has potential to be one of the largest undeveloped projects, and their excitement about its future growth and valuation.

➡ The project team is preparing a mining project for sale or development, aiming to make it attractive to potential buyers or partners. They’re working on increasing the project’s size and demonstrating its potential, with a focus on copper. The project already has a high-grade core and is larger than a typical starter project. The team is also planning to attend the Rick Rule Symposium, where they’ll be available for discussions about the project.

I saw a note recently that it is possible that every single ounce of silver will be 100% consumed by industrial need only. It’s growing that fast, right? It’s, it’s unbelievable. And so the other one is the insatiable need of copper, which is only becoming more and more important for the same reasons that it’s becoming important for silver. Well, hello there, my friends. Chris Marcus here with you for Arcadia Economics. And as we continue on in the midst of not only a silver deficit, but fortunately, as we will also dig into today, a lot of the silver comes from other mines such as copper, lead, zinc and gold mines.

And you might think, all right, well that, you know, sounds good to go in case the silver miners can’t dig enough out. Although, as you may have heard, there is also a structural deficit in the copper market and, and a whole host of other things that are happening at the same time while government’s Gone wild is continuing to project that every molecule on the planet will be turned into green energy by 2030, and if not by 2030, by 2050. So fortunately I’m joined by Ian Harris of Copper Giant. And Ian, it’s great to have you here.

You also have a silver company you’re involved with, so will really be helpful to get your perspective on a lot of these supply issues that people hear about. And with all that said, it’s a pleasure to have you and welcome on in. How are you today? I’m doing fantastic. Thanks for having me on. And, and we, we were having that little chat before we started recording and you know, I’m, I’m 30 years mining engineer and I like to pick projects that become mines and therefore I like the fundamental drivers for what we need. And it’s one of the, it’s why I like gold, I like silver and I like copper.

You know, you could say maybe zinc and some of the others, but because they’re true legitimate reasons why the planet needs them, what’s going on, and these under underlying fundamentals that it’s not a coincidence that everything is aligning at the, at the same time in this very cyclical business. Yeah, I certainly know what you mean. And, and especially because you have silver sitting somewhat in the middle of gold on one side, where it has that monetary component, yet also industrially following copper as well, something that often gets pair traded a lot is our morning show host Vince Lancy talks about.

So Ian, we will have plenty to dig into, although let us start with a quick look at the pricing. We’re recording on Wednesday, an hour Ahead of the Fed. This is going to air Thursday. Ian, do you want to make any quick Fed forecasts by the time people watch this will know if you’re right or wrong or you can also pass on that one if you’d like. So I say this a lot because I’m a mining engineer. My focus is a little bit more longer term and normally pricing is a battle between short term trading and long term fundamentals.

Right. I love Rick Rule. It’s like bull markets transfer wealth from the patient to the impatient or some term like that. So I’m more on the patient side. And so you know, I, I love, it’s sort of like copper, gold or silver. I said I don’t know when but I know it’s going higher. Right. And you can, and I’ve been long enough. I’ve seen gold go from $250 an ounce all the way to 1600, then $1800 an ounce and I don’t see why it’s not going to do the same thing again. So looking at how things look over a short period of time on an individual day, you know, I think Rick also said don’t base your long term over a weekend news.

Right. So it’s the same thing. So I think it’s, I’m not going to predict, I bet you that this Fed just keeps interest rates this flat. But look at gold’s performance despite, you know, an environment that hasn’t normally been so healthy for it. So if it gets healthy, what is it going to do? And we know what it’s going to do. It’s already set up, it’s already moving in, in a non healthy environment. What’s it going to do for a traditional healthy environment for, for gold? We know where these things are going to be going and it looks like we’re coming into a secular bull for all significant commodities.

It’s just, it looks like it’s there. Right? Yeah. And I might add, as you pointed out, I mean this is with allegedly quantitative tightening still happening and I don’t know if we’re in a high interest rate environment. I know Donald Trump thinks so. But Ian, the other thing you mentioned in there, it’s funny you mentioned the $250 gold price back around the turn of the cent reminded me, I guess this was a couple months ago because I was thinking at one point how gold from 250 it was, had become a 10 bagger. So maybe this was last summer.

Then as you were saying, I’m like, oh, wait a second, we’re we’re now attacked on another four bags. Not saying this will happen but it is interesting. You think over that stretch we had a 10 bagger. What would it be like if we had a 10 bagger over the next 20 years? Although we will leave that aside and just point out, I think you see the other one though is from 2000 to 2010ish about a 10 year run and you went from 250 to about 1600. So that other peak. Right. And there’s no reason why it’s not going to do the same.

Right. And, and and if doing those kind of numbers then you know 10,000 gold is a realistic number over the next 10 years. Right. And it, and again it’s a secular bull. It’s not a, it’s not a parabolic day to day. It’s one of these just slow grind where gold out will outperform the S P. Right. It’s, it’s, it’s a shift of money flowing from one sector to another come up to back to commodities. And so you can just see that, you can see how it’s building it up and you can see how this plays up over, over time.

So it’s not, it’s not crazy. Right? It’s not, it’s not a conspiracy theorist for me to sit here and say in the next 10 years it’s realistic that gold should go to 10,000 dol announce. Yeah. And I would add that this is. We’re still in the world where the majority of people walking around the planet are thinking about hey well we got the US treasury safe haven, all’s good to go. I would suggest that that dynamic is changing rapidly and substantially. And what happens when that really gets priced into the market? We’ll find out perhaps sooner than later.

But here we have a look at silver ah dipping below $37 as we record. We’ll see what happens after Jerome comes out. Although if we take a look at the one year chart on silver you can see it’s a little bit choppy and has increased in the past month which, but I want to make sure you see on the silver chart which is very interesting because it also goes to the copper chart. Right as you see this, the double top right you see we were saying in, in silver it came. It hit dollars back in November of 2024.

It broke slightly $25 again in June of 2025. As just. It’s, it’s obviously a very important line of resistance and that resistance has been broken. And it was a psychological line too it’s been broken. So I would expect you see some consolidation. But you know, there’s no, there’s no upward limit of where it can go in a medium term. But just on ratios you were, we hit that 100 to 1 ratio. It’s illogical. It’s normally a catalyst, normally for when silver starts to run. And you could look back, okay, if you look better, how far? If you’re Eric Sprott, it’s 18 to 1 because that’s the ratio comes out of the ground or very back historically it’s 30 to one or more recent history it’s a 40 to 50 to one.

But let’s just say it settles out at a 40 or 50 to one to, to gold you can say the price is way higher than where it is is today. And then silver is really cool because you have this compelling shifted dramatically. It is now truly an industrial metal. 20% of all gold, sorry, all silver goes into solar panels. You have a billion ounce deficit. It’s equivalent to a year’s worth of production built up. It just can’t go on. And how that dynamic because all other silver spikes, if you’re looking at those ones, there was a correction.

It was this one back in the 1980s, all the silver notes the treasury sold, all its, I think it was a few billion ounces of silver that were supporting the silver notes of the United States were dumped onto market. Right. There’s always a way that the, the, the new, new silver entered the system where I saw a note recently that it is possible that every single ounce of silver will be 100%, 100% consumed by industrial need only. It’s growing that fast, right. It’s, it’s unbelievable. And so the other one is, is, is the insatiable need of copper which is only becoming more and more important for the same reasons that it’s becoming important for silver.

It’s a. Our, our world is, needs more electricity, more high tech more. And the more electricity the world needs, the more copper and silver it needs. Right. Because that is really the driver. Right. Silver is the most efficient transfer of electricity in the world, followed by copper. But it’s obviously when, when are you willing to pay the price? So super high tech needs silver. If you need decent efficiency, you need copper. Right. I mean it’s, it’s just that simple. Yeah. And Ian, it sounds like, well, first of all you can see as you pointed out the similarities.

Let’s get back to the one year chart here. Here is silver. Then we overlay that and you see the double top on, on copper too, right? The June and June. Yeah. And Ian, perhaps you could put into context, we talk a lot about here, we, as you just mentioned, the silver deficit, which I might add is on track to grow. If it even stayed flat or the industrial even stayed flat, you still have a deficit, let alone. We won’t dig into all that today, but it seems like the dynamics, at least as I read about the copper market and here is, this was from Sprott last year and they’re mentioning the supply and demand imbalance.

So it seems quite similar. But obviously you get a real firsthand look at it. What could you say to folks about the similarities in the structural supply and demand for copper and silver? Okay, so the first thing I’m going to say and, and, and I tell Everybody, the number one source of your long term perspective right now should be based on. It was a BHP Insights. It was how copper will shape our future. That’s the title. I just looked in my cheat sheet to the side to make sure I got the right name. It is an amazing document and you truly understand what’s going on in the silver in the copper space, which relates a lot to what’s happening in silver.

But silver, the copper, you have to understand that it is not a green fat, right? It is an industrial pulse, right? The, the other layers of this green fad are just an extra layer of stress and that’s what’s been the majority of the focus, right? But over the last 75 years, copper has grown at a 2.1 CAGAR annual, you know, growth over 75 years. And it was as big populations move through the industrial revolution and said, we want light bulbs, right? I mean, we want electrical energy. And then the big one we saw, you know, in the 2008 period, time period was China this big blob of a billion people, you know, moving into a middle class.

And so that was, that was a huge one, right? But the difference now is that it’s cross, it’s across all populations, right? Plus you have India, right? India is supposed to go, it’s now on an 11% annual growth rate for copper usage. It is going through what China went through, right? On top of that you have layered a move from. And whether we like it or not, whether or not you agree with it or not, it’s happening, right? The majority of new power is solar, right? It’s happening. What’s driving silver prices higher? It is happening. And I will argue with people, it’s not about the energy transition, it’s about Speed, it just takes so much quicker.

You want some new power? We don’t have enough power. Put up some solar panels. Your permit time is three months versus a gas plant, which is two years, versus a nuclear power plant, which is 20. Right. It’s, it’s. We need it today and we need it fast. And it’s coming, right? And we need more electricity. We’re moving more energy into electricity. Right? You have that layer on top, plus you have electrical vehicles that is. You know, I was, I was recently in Phoenix, Arizona, and I saw my first autonomous vehicle. And I was like a little kid.

And then I was like, wait, the 20 just went by, right? It’s one of those, you’re going to wake up one morning and you start noticing on the streets, you know, the higher percentage of. You used to be cool when you saw that first Tesla. I know you guys remember the first time you saw a Tesla, you got excited the first time you saw a cybertruck. And now you look everywhere and US doesn’t have byd, Right? I’m here in Colombia and it’s like, wait a second. Every fifth car, it seems, is a new byd, right? It is huge, right? Or it’s just in Europe, you see so many more electric vehicles.

But my favorite is data centers and AI, Right? Because it’s an area where. Ready for you on that one. I have a couple notes pulled up because last year we heard Microsoft, Amazon, they’re all, all building plants. And I apologize for interrupting. Continue. But I go for it. The reason it’s so exciting is because you can say we can put a break on the energy transition. You could argue that people get out there and they do the rah, rah. Politically, it looks good to say, we need to save the planet, blah, blah. And then like, how much is this going to cost? What’s going on? Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Take your time. We don’t have enough copper. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Take your time. But AI and data centers is. I call it. It’s life and death, right? It’s life and death for the companies and it’s life and death for the countries. It is an AI race. It’s a data center race. And us is feels like they’re following behind. They don’t have enough copper. They don’t have their own production. Colombia, sorry, China has dominated the chains. They know that they need to do it. And even data centers right now, I think between 1 to 2% of all copper usage in the planet.

Right. Is expected to move to 7%. And I would argue that that is a number that is only going to go up. It’s not something you can decelerate. You have to accelerate. Right. Because if you lose that race, you’re dead. People think, you know, meta, Google, Microsoft, United States, China, whoever it is a race it is without a race. And, and you can’t lose the race. Right. So that’s the one that I think is only going to be pushing even harder. Right. Don’t have enough copper. Okay. We’ll make less electrical vehicles this year, but you can’t slow down AI and you can’t slow down data centers.

Yeah. And Ian, I’ll, I’ll venture my guess for who’s going to be pushing down on that gas pedal as they’re driving it. Here’s from COP28 where they’re committed to working to tripling the world’s installed renewable energy capacity. Not by 2050, but they’re just going to triple it by 2030. If we go back over to the article From Sprott here, 118 governments pledged to triplet. You see the same thing. The journey to global net zero emissions by 2050 may likely see copper taking center stage in its role as the leading transmission metal. So again, that’s coming from Sprott matching exactly what you’re saying.

And at the, at the bottom of it, I wonder, like, are these numbers even possible? And I know you had you mentioned in another interview I saw of you that basically in the next 20 years we need the 20, what would be the new 20 largest copper projects? And perhaps you can tell me, is that factoring in that’s, you know, if we hit these goals or if the government’s actually hit these goals, would we need even more than that? And is that actually possible? I’m a believer it’s impossible. I believe the reason I said BHP’s insight was that it puts a grain of realism on what can really be done.

Right. If you take the cops goals or any of these sort of, any sort of timelines, go back to the old Goldman Sachs, copper is the new oil. And that was trying to say even if, what if we can’t. What’s going on here? They said the demand is insane. Right. I like using bhp. You know, they’re a whole lot, let’s balance this all out and figure it out. And what they say is we’re going to go over the last 15 years we’ve been about a 1.9% growth on an annual basis, which is much lower than traditional, which is 3%.

Right. And they’re saying we’re now at the moment where we believe it’s going to go up to 2.6% annual compounding annual growth rate. Okay. Which is dramatic change, right? And it’s a dramatic change on demand which means you need an additional million tons of copper per year. We are currently producing 22, 23 plus recycling, plus here and there it’s about 28 to 30 million. So you can get in terms of numbers, that’s a pretty big number. Why is it a million? Because don’t forget that the existing producers are depleting so you have a depletion plus you need new, so you need new of a million tons per year.

And I think that’s a realistic number. But that’s a crazy number because then you look at okay, where’s it going to come from? And it’s not there, right? We have had a dramatic, dramatic capital starvation in copper, right? We’ve been spending about over the last 10 years about 150 billion in copper mostly through brownfields expansions. And now we need to spend 250 billion over the next 10 years. And there is not the availability of the brownfields overall. They even believe that overall brownfields will go down about 30% over the next 10 years. So there’s just not the projects and they’re so expensive now.

You need greenfields. When I say greenfields I’m not talking about exploration, I’m talking about mines. Right? An operating mine or versus a brand new mine where it’s now becoming more attractive. So the world. I did a presentation recently in Mallorca and I said okay, if that 1 million tons a year is correct, that means that you need, that is basically one 20 million ton deposit being mined over 20 years per year. Okay, so let’s look at the 15 biggest deposits in the world today. That means we need to mine all of them in the next seven years.

We need. Oh sorry, we need all, all of these top 15 to become mines in the next seven years. It puts it into perspective and this is over something that I think that BHP is actually more grounded. If you put up the numbers you saw. Forget it. It’s, it’s a new escondida every, every year. It’s the biggest copper mine in the world. We need 120 of them, right? It’s, it’s, it’s so much. Right. Which just says that must be incentivized, right? If we are going to get anywhere close to it. That means the commodities will go up, the equities will go up, everything’s going to go up.

And you know, I say it a lot. I love Rick Rule. It’s, it’s, what is this quote? And I think I have it written down here somewhere. Hold on a second. It says copper is the barometer of mankind’s progress. Right. But we know it’s going to happen. All the fundamentals are there. The equity markets are weak, but that makes the opportunity and that’s why we love the project that we have that copper giant. Yeah. And real quick, before we touch on that, I’m guessing that the conditions, especially on the junior side of the copper market are probably not entirely dissimilar from what we’ve seen in silver, where some of the senior producers have started to move, yet junior side still is still similarly depressed.

What we’ve seen in silver, well, it matters what your timeframe is. I would argue that if you got rid of the noise of Trump’s election, Trump’s tariffs, Trump’s everything, we would already been in a bull. And I think if you could argue, if you look at the little shoot, so you’re already started in a bull, most of it started in the precious metals space. You could argue that silver is already at a valuation that’s been somewhat supported and that it’s, it’s starting to, to move. Even in the junior equity side. It’s already there. Right. But that has created a little bit of pressure on the as monies.

It seems like it’s the same pool of money just gravitating to different locations. You’re finally starting to see a tiny little trickle. But greed, greed is the, the propellant of the equities market. Right. So once people start seeing there’s some winners here, it happens. And so maybe that’s called a little bit of, of tailwind overall on copper. But I think it’s, this is the last of it, like 20, 25. We’re going to look back and we realize, man, we were right in the middle of it. You can, I think we can pull up the charts on multiple companies that have, that have done extremely well over a short period of time and all sorts of in, in the, in metals and the gold and the silver in the, in the, in the copper space, that it’s the beginning of it all.

So I would say today copper is in a, it’s in the hated position as, as Rick likes to say it, he likes to be the contrarian, but it’s only because money has been moving into the few things that are actually moving. And so it’s very short term. I think you saw that, that, that top in copper, you saw it in, in silver we’re now breaking out just was one of the top analysts, Raymond James, he’s like copper’s next, it’s coming like it’s going to break out. It’s going to break out one more time over that $5 number right now.

This, right, this thing about this copper is called Dr. Copper. It’s supposed to be the pulse of the health of the world economy. Right? And you with all this tariff, all this hard soft landing in the United States all with China slowing down, all this, but it’s still at 4.8, it’s $4 and $0.80 per pound. It’s still there. So it’s going, wait a second. If the news all become, oh this terror problem’s through, we’re back on fire, everything’s growing, let’s go. Great, you know where it’s going to go? It’s already high despite an overall negative medium, you know, news perception or environment.

So they said it once it breaks the, the five dollar level is like Silver’s 35 level. Once it breaks it, it’s gotta go. Right. Because the, and, and if you look back at copper it’s very interesting. Look at the last time back in this, this March to April 2025. That’s when we also had. Let’s go back a little bit further when Goldman Sachs came up for the first time and said copper’s the new oil. And so the long term fundamentals took over the pricing. Right. And then oh, let’s go back. Oh no elections, tariffs, it got pulled back but it’s still there.

Like the underlying fundamentals, once it breaks $5, the expectation it will quickly run to 6. We’re in brand new territory and people understand that, that, that it’s needed. Right. And I like to say, okay, maybe we, and before I move on to a new topic, maybe if in case let you talk but say well what is the planet looking for? What are the majors looking for? Yeah, well a lot of interesting things you mentioned there and in fact reminds me similar with silver. I wonder if we’re not going to be looking back to what uranium looked like a couple of years ago where people are saying there’s an imbalance here, there’s an imbalance here and they got tired of hearing it for a while and then the imbalance corrected.

So Ian, definitely would love to hear any of your thoughts on the majors and also of course you are part of copper giant and I think it’d be great to hear you’re seeing the same dynamics that I am and that a lot of other people are and how you’ve gone about positioning yourself to be one of the companies to capture that. Because I know there are a lot of people who have been hearing this and saying all right, well if this is the case and gone through some of the reasons why it does appear to be in line.

So any of that that you could touch on would be great. So I love the lithium story and I love the uranium story because they show an ex, an underlying fundamentals when physical delivery you can only keep going for a certain long time until physical delivery really becomes a concern. Right. But in both those cases they corrected very quickly because. And I say this, this, I, I don’t. Maybe you can put a, a copyright on it, right? But I said it was a production problem, not a deposit problem, Right? Right. There are plenty of uranium, there’s plenty of lithium.

It’s how quickly it can get to market. Right. So you, you, you weren’t incentivizing the construction in lithium or uranium, but once it was incentivized it was corrected. Right. But if you look at gold, if you especially look at silver and especially look at copper, I like to say it’s a deposit problem, dummy, like as a joke. Right. But it’s a deposit problem, right. It’s not a production necessary. Silver has significant above ground inventories, Right. There is already significant production in the copper space. The problem is there’s no deposits. Right. Where is this going to be coming from? And that you know that eventually you just can, it cannot continue.

Eventually it will break down. The difference I think is, is that it’s not as an easiest problem to solve. So the correctional heart happening sooner like it has to happen. The correction has to happen because it’s not a. Okay, fine, let them turn on that. Okay. China. I almost think maybe, maybe China was just playing this game and this flooded the market knowing that they could and like okay, I just dominated a new market, right. That’s how I dominate a new market. But you can’t solve that problem bring pushing things into production into copper in silver angle because they’re not there, right.

It’s, they’re much bigger markets. And you also don’t have a quick question, if I may. I know you’ve mentioned that you don’t have many deposits deposit problem. And I believe you alluded in another one of your calls that it’s also even more specifically a big deposit problem because especially it’s already hard to find any of them. But the Big ones in particular. Am I getting that correct there? That is correct. And some of them. Okay, so. And we’ve also seen some other factors going on. The, the majors have been consolidating, right? They’ve been saying the quick, the lowest risk growth path is.

We believe that commodity prices are going to go higher. Looks like they’re correct. They are going higher. So the quickest way to grow is buying production and letting the commodity price rise. Yay. Create our growth. Right? You do know, and we know that if history repeats itself, it can only go on for so long, right? Eventually shareholders are going to go, your resources and your reserves are going down. We need more reserves. What is going on? What are you doing now for growth? Right? What have you done for me lately, right? The Eddie, old Eddie Murphy.

What have you done for me lately, Right? It’s, it’s. We know, unfortunately shareholders have shorter term visions, but you’ve created two problems. One, there’s less, there’s less companies. Meaning in order for them to move their balance sheet, they need bigger projects, right? They do not want to be constructing 200 projects. They want to be constructing one project, right? And individually, one project each at that magical million tons per per year, right? Silver has that same problem, right? Like they’re only 25, 20, 23 is actually primary silver and they’re smaller. And so that’s why silver companies become gold companies and why gold companies now become copper companies.

Look at Newmont, right? They, they wanted to become a copper company because they, they needed bigger size projects. So I would say this is an important concept. It is a project of merit, okay? Meaning something that actually is attractive. Companies want to see a billion tons, half a percent copper, which would then equate to about 10 million tons of contained copper or copper equivalent, right? So our Makoa pot we just put out some important news recently is that we’ve had an inherited resource of about 600 million tons. But I just said you got to get to a billion tons, right? So this is the one which you can go down and that’s the second one.

So we said, people keep thinking this is the entire posit. We know it could be much bigger. So we were able to do a very scientifically based calculation of the upside potential. And we’re seeing it an additional 900 to 1.2 million tons at an equivalent of that 0.49, 2.55, right? So the numbers are there to say. Plus the existing resource, just in the area around our existing posit, we have a pathway to get over that 2 billion, 2 billion ton mark at the half a percent which goes back to the 10 million tons, it is on a pathway to be certified as one of the, the projects of merit that people want to look for and would put it into the positions of where it’s one of the, you know, top 20 largest undeveloped projects.

And remember when I say that that includes the ones that are already sitting within the biggest companies of the world, some with multi billion dollar valuations. So we feel that we’re sit happy space. We’ve got two drills running. We know where we need to drill. We just have to do it. We have a current drill hole now that’s a 600 meter step out to really kind of help prove the upside potential of this which we just talked about. You can scroll up and I like if you scroll down and look at MD48, the next one, that’s MD47.

If you keep going to MD48. Right. But there’s a great map of it, of why we’re drilling it. But there it is. You can see all the drilling, all that 600 million tons is basically all those little black dots. And the drilling we’ve done to date, which is MD 43, 45, 44, 46 was kind of reconfirming. We’ve moved now to MD 47 move pads. But the big one is MD 48 which is a big step out to the east, plus it’s drilling more to the east. And if you continue to scroll up, we’re gonna, I’m gonna show you why we’re that.

Sorry, I’m. My brain works backwards. Scroll down. There it is. You can see Molly is our big indicator. Because Molly doesn’t mobilize. You can see a lot of a strong Molly indication around the deposit area, but mostly to the east. And then we’re also seeing an, you know, another little blob right there further to the east, which MD48 is shooting towards. If you see Molly at the surface, you know you’re going to see mineralization below it. And on our last hole we, we got into another porphyry type within the bottom of that hole and we go, oh, this means that this whole eastern side could be a, another massive extension to the existing deposit.

So that’s why we’re drilling, why we’re so excited. Because by the way, the little balls there are, are the, the, the Molly content in the rock samples. The blue is the soil samples, right. So we’re also seeing some very, very high grade mol rocks that direction which are very Similar to the rocks around the existing deposit area. So that’s why we’re so excited about this one because it kind of says this baby is getting much, much, much bigger in a, in a, in a time where there are very few. And I would also add mineralization starts from surface which is a third key.

Even if you look at the top 15 projects on the planet they’re sitting at 4,000 meters. They’re already 1,000 meters deep. They’re deep, they’re big capex. So to have a project of this size and scale, it’s 10km away from a 2,220 KVA power lines. It’s off a major road system, we’re 10km away from the town. It wouldn’t be a camp job. It’s not in the middle of nowhere. So we know it’s in a potential to be a very low capex project and it’s got all the things that the, the planet needs right now. So we, we are excited that you know this is that classic multi bagger style valuation.

I explained as we were talking beforehand. I feel like okay, we’ve got the ship, we got the crew, we’ve got the team, we got the backing, we’ve got everything. We just need a little bit of wind and we know that this thing will start revaluing it based on what already is there. Right. The value is already there. Just needs to have the evaluation properly established on the asset. And Ian, I know you mentioned that you had the inherited resource and obviously you have the drill program underway now. So so perhaps could you just give us a timeline of any of the key events and are you working towards a new resource and then I’ll try not to.

The last point to that what is the long term plan? Is it to go take it into production? So anything on the timeline there? Okay, so I’m going to take a step back. A lot of people know me from Coriente where the Mirador project in Ecuador, right. Became the first industrial scale mine in the history of Ecuador. Big copper project now one of the 20 moving towards the BE one of the 20 largest copper mines in the world and one of only five big copper mines built over the last 10 years. Right. You can look, there’s two in Peru, Cobra, Panama and then you had the DRC.

And I also mentioned I’m a mining engineer. Right. So this is my sweet spot. The sweet spot is post resource taking things and moving it forward to become a future mine and become something that’s attractive to, to market. ERNIE MAST Also one of the directors, he was CEO of NMets, Kobe, Panama. So in that Lassonde curve, you have this excitement around discovery and then, and then there’s an excitement builds again during development. So that is our sweet spot, right? So I always, I always say this a lot. I say if everybody’s sitting across the table and say our plan is to get to this stage and then sell, I’m like, take it with a grain of salt.

Because we don’t pick when we sell, people pick when they buy. And market drives that. And it really is, it’s risk on, risk off, right? When everything is exciting, right? They’re buying at super high prices, they’re buying anything left and right. Then the market goes down and then everybody gets fired, right? Like we saw that happen. Like 15 of the top 20 CEOs, the biggest mining companies in the world all get fired, right? Because there was a lack of discipline, because they were doing what basically they were getting shouted out, shouted at to do. But in a soft market, you know, it could take your got all your permits in place, you’re about to ready.

I saw some gold projects get bought after they had the financing in place. Like they were ready to start turning those shovels and starting constructing it themselves and it was bought. So what, what’s my point? My point is we have an expertise to get them across the finish line. Being involved in some of the few projects that actually got built. So my mindset, I am doing everything as if I am going to build this. You have the deposit, I call it the gift. You put a nice box on it, you put the ribbon on it. You’re talking the permitting, the environmental, the social, all these concepts that say if somebody, when they’re ready to buy, you are the prettiest present underneath the Christmas tree.

So you need to be thinking like you are going to build it, right? And maybe we do. Maybe it’s something more like what’s happening at Filo de Soul. And BHP wants to do a JV in order to develop these type of projects. We have the expertise, why not? Or somebody just goes, nope, let me do it. I’m willing to pay way more than your work to be able to do that. Right. But that’s the vision. So in the near term we are looking at doing an updated resource for multiple reasons to kind of say, guys, this project is continuing to get bigger, understand that.

But we’re also going to be working on the initial engineering because we’re already at 600 million tons. We want to get over that in the next resource Estimate we want to be at least over that billion. But you’re already big, right? Like the rest is really showing the blue side, the blue sky side of the project. You want to continue to demonstrate how the project can get bigger and bigger. Big companies, they want district scale, which we also have on. I won’t even go into that piece. But they want a starter. Perfect starter project in copper is about 30,000 tons per day.

That’s about 200 million mineable tons. Right. We’re already at 600. Right. So but to be top 20, right, you need to get up to 150. But they’d rather start it at 30, 30 than 60, then 90, then 120. Why 30? It’s the biggest trucks, it’s the biggest mills, it’s the biggest everything. You get the economies of scale already, but then it’s just easier. Okay, let’s just double it and then double and add another line to it. So that’s the other thing that’s great. We have a high grade core that goes up to 1%. So call it between that 0.7 and 1% area.

That would make a perfect starter scale project. But it says it’s time to put in the energy into doing the engineering to start demonstrating the economics of the project. Well, Ian, I mean it seems like you’re in the right place at the right time with the right kind of project. And of course obviously it always comes down to, to the execution. But being in, I think a lot these days about the concept of fishing in the right pond, not trying to convince the vegetarian why to buy your steak, but being in the right setting at a right at a good time really is a big step and it seems like you have that lined up and an exciting project.

Ian, I know you’ll also be at the Rick Rule Symposium. I almost called it the Sprott symposium again, but next or this coming July, I think it’s the 7th to the 11th, I will be there as well. So anyone watching at home, great show to attend and Ian, I believe people will have a chance to talk with you there. And perhaps you could also let everybody else know who might not be able to make it if they have questions, would like to find out more about Copper Giant. What is the best way to do so listen for anybody with Rick Rule and I, as you can tell, I like to talk too much.

I love telling the story. I’m excited about the story, I believe in the story. I invite everybody. Just my easiest way to get in touch me is a WhatsApp message and so because I’m in South America, everybody uses WhatsApp down here, right. I get too much spam on my actual text messages, so they get missed. But WhatsApp is, seems to be a lot cleaner. So I say I use a US number plus 130-956-2944 and send me a message on WhatsApp. Otherwise, look at the end of any press release and you see Tetiana’s name and email. She knows where to find me.

And so if somebody wants to set up an update or whatever, has some questions, she is the best person to write to because she’ll get a hold of me. Right. So we’re also within the Fiore Group, which is obviously we have the sponsorship of Frank Giustra, our largest shareholder, so there is a think tank within that group too. So there’s, there’s, there’s multiple ways of finding us. And despite me working in South America and working in Medellin, I just think it’s, that’s what it takes to be able to build these projects into future minds. You have to be on the ground, you have to be watching it on a day to day basis and navigating.

These are really big ships, right, so you want to be navigating, navigating it properly as things move forward. Yeah, I certainly agree and that definitely is helpful being on the ground. So, Ian, just one more time, the number please. For anyone else missed it the first time, 303-956-2944. Again, send me a message because you’d be just calling, I don’t reckon I won’t answer. I get too much, too much spam nowadays from spam callers. But send me a message, be happy to answer and then that’s, that’s the best way to go, I think, to, to stay in touch.

All right, Ian, well, I sure appreciate that and I will be looking forward to seeing you in just a couple weeks at the Rick Symposium. And thanks so much for making some time. A lot of great information, the connection between silver and copper and also really highlighting the copper situation, which I think doesn’t get out there quite as much, but hopefully this was helpful to everyone watching at home. Sure appreciate you being here as well. And Ian will look forward to seeing you in a couple weeks, my friend. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure having the chat today, Sam.
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