Wheaton advances Kutcho feasibility funds

Kutcho Copper Corp. April 4 said it has received a US$3.5 million advanced payment from Wheaton Precious Metals Corp., the first payment of US$7 million under an August 2017 precious metals purchase agreement between Kutcho and Wheaton.

Under this agreement Wheaton will pay Kutcho US$65 million for up to 100 percent of the payable silver and gold production from the Kutcho copper-zinc-silver-gold project in northwest British Columbia. Additionally, the precious metals streaming company will make ongoing production payments to Kutcho equal to 20 percent of the spot prices of silver and gold delivered.

A prefeasibility study prepared for Kutcho Copper outlines a mine at the Kutcho project that would produce 378 million pounds of copper and 473 million lb of zinc, plus by-product gold and silver, over 12 years of production.

The company has developed plans to complete a feasibility study for Kutcho in 2019.

To gather the data for this study, this year's program is to include additional geotechnical work on the deposits; a drill program to upgrade a portion of the inferred mineral resources to the measured and indicated categories; additional metallurgical test work; and environmental baseline studies.

"With the field season approaching, the company has been vigorously planning for its upcoming field program which will include work such as geotechnical drilling, metallurgical testing, various permitting efforts and resource expansion drilling necessary to feed into and complete the feasibility study," said Kutcho Copper President and CEO Vince Sorace.

The US$3.5 million payment from Wheaton will help fund this work and Kutcho anticipates receiving the second tranche of US$3.5 million in August.

–SHANE LASLEY