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 welcome to CEO insights I'm Marilyn dezman with investing news.com I'm speaking with Gordon Neil CEO of world copper how are you Gordon I'm excellent thank you I was pretty busy here today at pdac yeah so I guess my first question to you you know having been recently appointed as the CEO of the company uh our investors are probably going to be interested to know provide some background about yourself yeah so um I started in the resorts business in 2003 as the VP of corporate development for mag silver so

I gravitated toward silver Corp and reing uh because um uh he has a a really good way of running a silver company and I was approached by um he Alin at um world copper to um to look at the CEO role for world for World copper and I I jump from there to the CEO role of R copper the rest is history yeah so I'm here today so what's your or first order of business as the new CEO um first order of buiness is to clean up the balance sheet a bit there's some debt in the balance sheet I'm doing that right

now we've got a $4 million offering going right now half of that money is going to go to pay down the debt and the other half will go for operation um I'm also looking at sort of moving the company in a new direction we have two Assets in World copper one is the escalona asset in Chile uh and the other one is the zonia asset in Arizona I want to uh I want to move the company to a new place and that place is actually um Escalon is is a great asset it uh it has uh 426 million tons of O copper oxide uh

almost 3.4 billion pounds it's the largest development project corer development project in Chile right now however um it's an infer the inferred category and you need to move that to to measured and indicated to have any kind of serious uh interest in the project um the Chilean government recently in November uh put the Chile uh put escalus in a nature Sanctuary we're not 100 sure 100% sure what that means but we do anticipate that getting permits for drawing will be even longer than they

are now in Chile which is 18 months so it kind of impaired the asset a bit I will admit um there are some Majors that are looking at it and uh if they were interested in it if they become interested it would be something that I would look at shedding uh even though it's large and it does add add hour add pounds of copper to our inventory the zonia asset is the one that inter me most and what I want to do is move the company from where it is today to a US Centric Coffer company the US government that

the department of energy has made uh determined that copper is a critical metal and so there is lots of attention and funds are available for companies that are have us domicile project so Arizona is the biggest Copper State or one of the biggest copper producers in the world that that area and it produces 71% of all of us the US is copper and so um I would like to to focus on zodia and bring in more us assets but zonia is interesting because it's it ticks all of the boxes for uh a copper project that

could go into Pro go into production fairly quickly uh fairly cheaply and um economically uh it's on private land which I can get permitted easily it has power on site it has water on site it is an oxide that's at surface the strip ratio is 1: one and there's a billion pounds of uh of copper in this in in the deposit so far and that's just on the private land portion we have three times the amount of land around so I think my direct my my my um discussions with the board have been let's put this thing

into production now having said that it's important to remember I come from a back ground of corporate development and putting things in into development so I'm going to get asked the question so how do you put something into production if you haven't done that before and the answer is I've got four I've I've had two copper mine Builders who approached me to build this mine and they're serious mine Builders one of them is built we built a car carot Mine in Arizona and built Sarah Gordon in

chilling and they're both ssw mines which uh zonia would be an sxcw uh operation as an oxide and it's very environmentally friendly you produce a cathode there's no concentrate um it has a much higher uh percentage of environmental ability um attached to it so uh I think what I what I've suggested to the board is we move this thing down the development track down down to production at um uh 500 uh 500 million tons at um 500 million tons at 37 uh perent copper sorry that's 3%

cover as clonus is 37 I'm just learning my numbers now because I'm new but but uh with the with the fact that it's ssw you're going to be able to to um to produce copper uh from zonia for 15 to 20 years uh at 50 at 50 million pounds a year so that's the focus the focus is going to be on zonia we're going to bolt on I would hope I'm looking at some other um some other Assets in the US oxide assets uh but I want it to be a us Centric uh us Centric copper company are you seeing some uh like so obviously the

the US government is as you mentioned Shoring up domestic Supply in terms of policies and with the permitting is one of the biggest challenges I think with the length of of permitting are you seeing some improvements there that will enable you know for you to go uh into production with so um as I I think I mentioned this before but it's important you're right permitting I just Lear today too that some permitting in Arizona is actually um you know fairly tough uh however if you own private land

that's actually been already been Opera this zonia was a was already in operation as a copper mine in the 60s so um so to get that permitted again is not that difficult uh it's the time it's not that timec consuming because it's on private land so the permitting part for me is not is not is not is really one of those tick boxes that's that's already been ticked we can get it permitted fairly quickly and fairly easily on the private side on the surrounding land which is the BLM land around us that

will take us some years but remember if I'm starting this process of getting into production now the the uh the fellow who's helping me do this who who built carot and Sierra Gordo um he sees this as being a he can build this and he says three to four years that's a very tight timeline um the need for copper in the US and around the world is is is quite substantial so if I can get this thing into production and producing you know 40 to 50 Bill uh million tons million pounds of copper a

year then I want to get it started can you mention this while you know one of your strategies to bring in my assets what for what's your strategy criteria am looking at assets well uh I would prefer again I'm kind of lucky that I haven't built a mine before but I have mine Builders who are working for me uh so an sxw plant is probably the easiest Pro you're going to go on an open fit is a probably on an oide is the easiest is the easiest form of processing uh copper so I'd be looking for another copper

oxide deposit or Pro property I would say I don't know if it's a deposit yet I have my own a couple uh and we are in discussions with a couple of groups um but I would be looking at similar uh similar uh profile as zonia for the other assets in the United States they're not easy to find uh oxides at surface are you know they're mostly gone because they're easy pickings but there are some around here at indac you're obvious you're to investors uh what do you say to them what M go

C no the good thing about presenting these things or having these interviews is you get to say the same thing over and over again because what is compelling about what's most compelling about uh about world copper in my mind is zonia zonia is T to it takes all of the boxes of of a a copper project or a deposit that is ready to go the the costs are going to be low um it's a it's a uh quartz monite PF Frey where the acid consumption will be low 25 lbs per ton uh um so it it's again private land power is

there water is there private it's on private land I can permit it really easily sxw it's a very inexpensive a least less expensive way to process I don't have a concentrate I don't have any tailings because it's because I'm doing ssw it's more environmentally friendly I would I would invest in this company because we've built mines before that that are profitable and this is an easy project to understand and to get down the road to uh to economic viability well well thanks Gordon for

joining me and taking the time to speaking with me today thanks for having me very exciting here and again I'm very excited about joining World copper uh we're going to do great things thank you thank you thanks everyone for joining us and join us again next time for another engaging conversation on CEO insights if you like this video make sure you subscribe to our Channel and turn on notifications so you don't miss future updates and interviews see you next [Music] time for