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In a wide-ranging interview on Monday August 11, John Slaven, the chief executive officer of copper technology firm Jetti Resources, told Fastmarkets that he believes the US could reduce its copper deficit by as much as 60% almost overnight, using existing infrastructure, mined ore and a commercially proven leaching technology.
The issue is that the mining industry needs a push to adopt the solution – and maybe a nudge from policymakers, Slaven said.
“[US] President [Donald] Trump’s objective is clear – the US needs to become self-sufficient in minerals such as copper,” he added. “Tariffs are one lever to pull], but I think there are a lot of other levers as well.”
Despite its mineral wealth, the US imports large volumes of copper. The problem is not resources, but under-utilized capacity and insufficient investment, Slaven said.
Many domestic US copper deposits consist of lower-grade primary sulfide ores or complex copper ores that are expensive or difficult to process using traditional smelting and refining methods. Meanwhile, traditional smelting and refining facilities are costly to build, slow to expand and face significant environmental and regulatory challenges.
“The US has a supply-demand deficit, which is counter-intuitive, given how much copper resource there is in the US,” he said. We’ve got resources in the ground and we’re actually generating a lot of copper scrap.”
Copper concentrates from mines are often exported because the US lacks sufficient smelting and refining capacity. That creates a situation where US-produced copper must be shipped abroad – often to China – before it returns in usable form.
“There’s got to be some sort of support for miners to build smelters,” Slaven said. “But that’s going to be many billions of dollars and decades in the making.”
According to Slaven, Jetti’s proposition is simpler, cheaper and faster.
Jetti’s technology targets the so-called “stranded” copper – low-grade primary sulfides that are already above ground at permitted mines but have not been recovered due to technological and economic constraints.
“This is copper that can be produced tomorrow, if somebody chooses to,” Slaven told Fastmarkets.
The US has around 800,000 tonnes per year of solvent extraction–electrowinning (SX-EW) capacity available, he noted, but it is currently producing just 430,000 tpy of cathode.
“If you fully utilized the installed SX-EW capacity in the US, you would reduce the deficit by 60%,” he added. “It is a meaningful number and it’s available virtually immediately, with no permitting, and with very little capital expenditure. It is the ultimate no-brainer.”
SX-EW is a two-stage hydrometallurgical process used to produce pure copper metal from copper-rich leach solutions, typically derived from oxide and secondary sulfide ores – all without needing to smelt.
Jetti says that its technology enhances the quantity and quality of copper in the leach solution, making the downstream SX-EW process more productive and efficient, while also enabling the leaching of primary sulfide ores that traditionally required subsequent smelting.
Jetti’s technology, deployed at sites such as Capstone Copper’s Pinto Valley, has shown that it can significantly boost recovery rates.
“If you didn’t use Jetti technology on run-of-mine [unprocessed] ore, you could probably get about 10% or 15% of the copper out. If you use Jetti, you get to 45%. If we were to crush the ore, the recoveries go to 60%,” Slaven said.
And all this comes at a low cost, he added. “We can deploy it at less than $10 million of capex, so it’s a rounding error in the equation,” he said. “The incremental operating cost is $1.00-1.50 per lb.”
Still, many miners hesitate. According to Slaven, the industry is cautious, particularly given the costs that might be incurred by getting it wrong.
Some companies, including Freeport-McMoRan, Anglo American and Rio Tinto, are developing their own technologies, but Slaven said that none are yet commercially proven.
Smaller miners, however, are proving more open-minded.
“We are now working with smaller miners too,” Slaven said. “They are able to move quickly, and you don’t have the same issue with the internal technology groups wanting to promote their internal technology developments.”
To scale-up the effects, government support could be pivotal – particularly in absorbing early-stage risk.
“What the mining companies are concerned about is spending time and money on something that doesn’t work,” Slaven said. It would therefore be important, he said, to secure government support to get through that first 18-24 months.
Jetti sees opportunity in smart, targeted government incentives – especially those that distinguish between concentrate and cathode.
“What the [import] tariffs would have done is increase the financial benefit of producing cathode over concentrate… Suddenly, leaching becomes a much more attractive avenue,” Slaven said.
He added that there is also an argument for government stockpiling – not just of refined copper, but of ore.
“The copper is effectively sitting in ‘cold storage’ but it’s not useful,” Slaven told Fastmarkets. “Rather than having it sitting on the ground at 0.2% in a rock, recover it and put it in a strategic [stockpile]… The government takes the risk on recovering it economically, and the miners get paid for their copper now.”
In addition to cost and speed, Jetti’s technology offers a lighter environmental footprint than traditional concentrators, particularly where water is scarce.
Aside from a lower energy and emissions footprint, Jetti’s process requires less water overall to dissolve and recover the copper, even compared with traditional leaching methods. SX-EW operations often use closed-loop or semi-closed water circuits, meaning that water is recycled within the plant instead of being discharged.
While major agreements with large miners are slowly progressing, Jetti sees growing momentum among smaller market participants – and the company believes the opportunity is too significant to ignore.
“We are currently very, very close to concluding an agreement with two [major miners], but we are now working with smaller miners too,” Slaven told Fastmarkets.
“We’ve got the ore,” he said, “the recovery capacity exists, we’ve got a technology that’s available. Let’s go and get it done.”
In Hotter Commodities, special correspondent Andrea Hotter covers some of the biggest stories impacting the natural resources sector. Read more coverage on our dedicated Hotter Commodities page here.