welcome to CEO insights I'm Marilyn dezman with Inn I'm speaking with Robert we president and CEO of asisco medals hi Robert hi hi where are you good good to see you again yes likewise glad to be here yeah so today we're talking about copper the copper Market um I want to get your opinion there's a um a report that came out from the international copper study group and they're talking about they're projecting a major supply surplus for copper in 2024 there's also this S&P Global report that says you


know uh the cooling the cooling of kurd demand for copper uh but it projects a 20% uh increase in demand as well by 2035 so what are your thoughts on this and um uh you know from your perspective our perspective I think we're still going to have a relatively balanced Market in 2024 but uh we anticipate a global deficit by mid 2025 and uh that might even be exacerbated by the recent closure of Cobra Panama which was about 3% of Two and a Half 3% Global Production that's big hit and there's nothing in the in


the pipeline right now could possibly replace that operation so uh we're still dealing with a very delicate in the supply demand situation um I find the international uh study group tends to be a bit um pessimistic on demand also optimistic on new Supply uh reality is is that a lot of these projects a lot of projects even have the visibility stage just don't make it to production like I could cite a lot of examples and that's due to permitting risk it's very nice to have a feasibility but there's are there are


tier one copper assets out there that have been bogg down and preventing nightmare for 10 years even in North America so uh just because of projects at the feasibility stage you know should not be included necessarily as future Supply because uh jurisdictional and pering risk is is increasing all the time um so that should I think uh for example Goldman Sachs predicting um 4 430 450 copper by year end and uh significant increase uh in 2025 and that's actually a two-edged sword because as you even if you raise


the price of copper to six bucks and then the market reacts equities improve you get more liquidity more investment that's great they'll you get capitalization to accelerate uh new projects and bring them online but uh High commodity prices also tends to increase uh in certain jurisdiction resource nationalism and then when you have resource nationalism kicking in all a sudden then jurisdictional risk kicks in so um you really want in an Ideal World you want tier one assets of course and safe


jurisdictions uh but I'm very happy to settle for a tier 2 asset that's which what we're working on in Canada um where resource nationalism doesn't even a high copper price environment will not uh risk uh the pering process right yeah so um so on that note yeah uh again just because projects are feasibility does not necessarily mean production in the near term so uh all we're seeing right now also you know child is predicting or children is predicting slight drop and production


and so on we follow mostly data from S&P Global and woodmac actually so for all those reasons we're we're very bullish we're very bullish on copper what do you see so um you know you talked about permiting is that still and you know against the back the backdrop of governments especially North America in Canada and the US instituting their critical medal strategy in the USD um their strategy as well where are those Investments and what what are what Still Remains as challenge of putting getting mines into


production well Canada and most provinces the uh the pathway to permiting is is clear and on average you're looking at a four to fiveyear process at both provincial Federal levels problem in the states is that NOS have become very good at suing the government agencies that hand out uh hand out the permits uh so you end up in the situation uh a culture of litigation where you can bog down the permitting process for years by hanging it up in court and there are great exellent examples right now it's just you know


for example with the in Arizona with uh with the Rosemont copper and um and Pebble we forget it's one of the biggest undeveloped copper assets on the planet and I just can't see Pebble ever being developed and also resolution is is world class tier one asset also caught up litigation so you have to keep the governments have to have to modernize their mining code uh and try to exclude environmental litigation as much as possible out of the permitting process because when you allow um private groups to sue


government to freeze up projects there's just no end to it right potentially so fortunately for Canada uh this kind of culture and and legal opportunism has not really uh permeated system which still which makes Canada very attractive jurisdiction on the priting side right and now I think this is a good time to talk about your projects in Canada yeah exactly in Canada give us an overview of what those projects are and the the status of those projects yeah so both uh both are Brownfield projects past


producers uh gasby copper project and uh and Eastern Quebec which acquired from Glen Core last July after a couple years of negotiation and one year of uh due diligence so we're at the resource definition stage uh we have uh new mineral resource estimates going to be published in q1 uh for gas B coer this year uh we're going to do more drilling this year to uh further uh convert and uh and expand on the the resources open pit resources and uh uh we hope to launch uh paa by year end after doing a lot of


trade-off studies which are currently under way uh including extensive metallurgical work uh but we're also launching the environmental impact study this year uh also with the objective of starting dewatering uh the open pit this year so it's advancing well we have about a $6 million budget slated for for gas breake Hopper this year uh Pine Point is John V Ed with apping capital so uh got $26 million Budget on that one uh launching feasibility uh and filing uh the uh project description and dar uh to


initiate uh the pering process so we're on a four-year timeline to essentially get shovel ready uh at pint point and uh gas bake coer we're on a on a 5-year timeline so if you're you know War v i in Vancouver uh what's the key message you want to convey to the attendees here the investors who are attending your v i well uh our lead project uh we still have 100% so and as I said we're quite bullish on copper so essentially uh om is is a bed on copper uh tier an excellent tier 2 asset in the save


jurisdiction uh it's been more difficult for us to sell the zinc project but when people think of based metals are critical the first thing comes to mind is copper which is normal I mean the global copper Market is 10 times the size of zinc so so uh for those investors who uh are bullish and coppers as we are um it's an excellent time take a position in the Cisco LS well thanks uh for joining us today Robert thank you and thanks everyone for watching join us again next time for another engaging conversation on CEO


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