Vale Base Metals and Glencore are teaming up to chase copper in the Sudbury basin.
The two miners have signed an agreement to evaluate a potential copper development opportunity at depth at Glencore’s mothballed Nickel Rim South mine in the city’s northeast end.
Nickel Rim South went into care and maintenance in 2024.
The companies have adjacent properties with deposits and figure the best way of fully exploring the potential is through the shaft at Nickel Rim.
A Vale news release said once an evaluation period is done, Vale and Glencore will form a 50/50 project joint venture, which proposes deepening a Glencore mine shaft and developing new drifts to access copper deposits.
The companies seem very confident of success in putting out a statement that this joint affair is likely to produce an estimated 880,000 tonnes of copper over a 21-year life. The capital cost for all infrastructure involved ranges between US$1.6 billion to US$2 billion.
Since the Sudbury basin’s geology is considered polymetallic, there’s also nickel, cobalt, gold, platinum group metals and other minerals to be had.
Once detailing engineering, permitting and consultation is finished in 2026, a final investment and construction decision is expected in the first half of 2027.
Over the decades, when Vale was Inco and Glencore was Falconbridge, the cross-community rivalry between the two miners was very real. The opportunities to partner and pursue mutually beneficial projects in the basin never came to pass.
In a statement, Vale Base Metals CEO Shaun Usmar said he's pleased in the commitment between the two companies that might lead to a historic and “new collaborative way of working” to reach copper zones “that would otherwise be lost to both companies.”
“The proposed 50-50 joint venture aims to leverage Glencore's unused infrastructure to access orebodies on both our properties. This will benefit our respective companies, our local communities in and around Sudbury, and it has the potential to produce nearer-term critical minerals from this prolific brownfield project for the Canadian economy. My hope is it will be a catalyst to unearth further synergies in the region."