Carmacks

Property Snapshot

Resource & Reserve

See the Feasibility Study's Executive Summary

Property History

The property was purchased by Western Copper Holdings and Thermal Exploration Ltd. in 1989. Western and Thermal subsequently merged to form Western Copper Holdings Ltd. in 1995. The company performed significant diamond drilling campaign in the early 1990’s, as well as metallurgical test work, baseline environmental testing and geotechnical studies.

Following the completion of a Feasibility Study by Kilborn Engineering Pacific Ltd. in 1995, the company submitted a mine development permit application. In 1997 a basic engineering report was completed and some limited site development was undertaken. In the late 1990’s the company withdrew its permit application and halted further site work due to changing market conditions.

Western Copper Holdings Ltd. changed their name to Western Silver Corporation in 2003.

In late 2004 Western Silver re-entered the permitting process and has been engaged since then in the environmental review process under both the YEA process and more recently under the newly enacted YESAA process.

Glamis Gold Ltd. purchased Western Silver Corporation in 2006 and spun off a separate firm named Western Copper Corporation. Western Copper Corporation retained the rights to the Carmacks Copper Project.

Location

The Carmacks Copper Project is located in the Whitehorse Mining District near the Village of Carmacks in the Yukon Territory, Canada. The Yukon Territory has a very low geopolitical risk and the Yukon Government is supportive of mine development.

The Village of Carmacks is located 175 km northwest of Whitehorse on the Klondike Highway. The Klondike Highway is paved and is a main transportation corridor in the Yukon. The project site is located approximately 38km northwest of the village of Carmack, near Williams Creek and 8 km west of the Yukon River. The site is currently accessible by an existing 12 km exploration road that leads north from km 33 of the Freegold Road, a secondary, government maintained, unpaved roadway that originates in Carmacks.

The property consists of 262 full-size and fractional claims in one contiguous block, and 26 claims in a second contiguous block.

The Minto deposit, owned by Sherwood Copper, is located approximately 50 km to the northwest of the Carmacks Copper Project.

Situated 180 km south of Whitehorse by paved road is the year-round port of Skagway Alaska.

The climate in the Carmacks area is marked by warm summers and cold winters. Precipitation is light with moderate snowfall, the heaviest precipitation being in the summer.

See the Carmacks Project Maps

Plant Description

The Carmacks Copper Project will be developed as an open-pit mine with an acid heap leach and a solvent extraction/electrowinning (SX/EW) process facility producing, on average, approximately 14,500 tonnes of LME Grade A cathode copper annually.

PROCESS

- Oxide ore will be hauled by truck and dumped directly into the primary crusher, from where it will be conveyed to secondary and tertiary crushers;

- The crushed product will first be agglomerated with sulphuric acid and water and then conveyed by a series of overland conveyors to a lined valley fill leach pad where it will be placed by means of a radial stacker;

-The crushed ore on the leach pad will be irrigated with dilute sulphuric acid to leach copper from the ore;

-Pregnant leach solution will be collected and pumped to the solvent extraction plant where the dissolved copper in the solution will be concentrated;

-This concentrated solution passes to the electrowinning plant where the dissolved copper is plated onto cathodes;

-Copper is stripped from the cathode and is then transported to market.

POWER

Discussions have taken place with Yukon Energy, the regional electrical utility company, to serve the mine from their new 138 kV transmission line being built between Carmacks and Stewart Crossing along the existing Klondike Highway. The line extension to the Carmacks mine would consist of an 11-kilometer 138 kV transmission line to the mine’s main substation.

Total project electrical load is estimated to be about 10 megavolt-amperes (MVA).

WATER

Total fresh water required is about 800 m³/day, which will be supplied from a combination of stored precipitattion and fresh water supply wells located in the bedrock-confined aquifer underlying the Williams Creek drainage.

Potable water will be produced by means of a packaged treatment plant.

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