Cyprium Metals Limited has continued to progress the refurbishment of the project whilst the Company is conducting a finance process for the restart the operation. Nifty Restart Progress: Project finance remains the key focus for Cyprium. The pre-development work continued in parallel with the finance process, as it was intended to ensure that the Nifty site was ready at the go-line for when financing was completed, prior to the commencement of refurbishment and construction activities. Much of the operational readiness activities have now been completed, so being prudent and minimising ongoing holding costs, the Company has temporarily downsized its Nifty site workforce to approximately 20 personnel and contractors, in order to maintain the site in good order and reducing operating expenditure until the finance is completed. Consequently, a number of positions throughout the business have been made redundant. The progress made by Nifty employees to date has been exceptional, with significant progress towards being operationally ready for the project kick off. The workforce is to be commended for their efforts
and progress whilst the site has remaining on care and maintenance since its acquisition. This has also been achieved at Nifty over the past 14 months without a Lost Time Injury. Work around the heap leach pads has involved trenching and drilling to obtain samples for assay and testing. Drainage has been re-established to direct leach solutions to the collection ponds and prevent overflowing during rain events. Access has also been re-established to the top of the heap for transport and placement of residue from the collection ponds. Image 1 shows where leach solution exits and collects after each significant rain event. The blue colour is the copper sulphate in the leach solution
and the copper can be seen precipitating on the bottom lift of the heap in the background. This photograph was taken on the 25 September 2022 and clearly demonstrates that the heap pads continue to leach copper. The solution from the heap has been directed to collect in the drains at the heap front. To achieve this, repairs had been undertaken to some liners and material has been cleaned out of a number of areas from these drains. Image 2 shows where these drains have collected the solution and flows into the primary leach solution (PLS) pond. Over time, the collection ponds have filled up with residue so that there is limited storage freeboard. The residue is a mixture of ore fines, precipitated solids and solution. The team has been pumping solution from these ponds and have established access so that the ponds can be dried out and the material excavated back up to the heap leach. Once the ponds have been emptied, they are able to be inspected, refurbished, and relined. In the mean time, the capacity has been improved so that in rainfall events, the solution is retained within the ponds, which has previously been restricted due to
being filled wih solids. Image 3 shows this solution at the pump outlet being discharged to the PLS pond (relatively clean and free of solids). The solution has a grade of +10 gpl copper when compared to a usual solvent extraction (SX) feed grade of 3 to 4 gpl copper. This significant solution inventory of over 500 tonnes of copper is available for project commissioning. The clean-up of the SX has been completed to a stage where it is ready for refurbishment tasks to commence. The electrowinning (EW) clean-up has proceeded very well with stripping of anodes and cathodes from cells. Many cathodes still had copper attached which has been stripped and placed on pallets ready for sale. There are currently around 25 tonnes of copper cathode on pallets. Image 7 shows pallets of copper cathode ready to transport. The anodes and cathodes have been palleted up for sale as they have recycling value for lead, stainless
steel and copper. The dried solids have been collected for return to the circuit for when the refurbishment commissioning commences. The site team have worked through a site clean-up programme covering a significant amount of
material across the whole site. The useable items are catalogued through the stores system and relocated to a secure site. The process now involves sorting the required and excess stores (such as underground equipment and parts) and then sending the surplus material for sale. This process has commenced with equipment loaded into containers and being dispatched to Perth.