The Sentinel copper deposit is located west of Solwezi in the North Western Province of Zambia. It is part of the Trident project which comprises five prospecting licences totaling 2,300 square kilometres containing a number of attractive base metal prospects. First Quantum acquired the project in February 2010.
In April 2011, large scale mining licenses for the development of the Trident project were received. The licences give the Company the exclusive rights to carry out mining operations on the full area of interest at Trident for a period of 25 years. Both the EIA was approved and a land use agreement was agreed to in July 2011 for the development of Sentinel deposit.
Resource drilling on the Sentinel deposit is essentially finished with approximately 170,000 metres of core drilling in nearly 500 holes completed in the last 14 months. Geological modeling, data analysis and reporting are currently in progress. Finalization of the resource estimation awaits the last batches of laboratory assays and should be complete in Q3 2011.
Based on an internally generated resource estimate, the Company is proceeding with the design of a project that is expected to initially produce 150,000 tonnes of copper in concentrate annually then rising up to 300,000 tonnes of copper in concentrate. Once the resource drilling is complete, the production target may be increased further. A National Instrument 43-101 (“NI 43-101”) compliant resource statement for the Sentinel deposit is expected later in 2011. Initial design works have commenced, the long lead mills and mill drives have been ordered, and initial construction works are planned to commence in Q4 2011 with commercial production being achieved in 2014.
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