Infinitum Copper Corp. (INFI:TSX) is moving into the new year with a new president and chief executive officer and a renewed focus on its flagship La Adelita project in Mexico.
Matt Hudson takes the reins from Steve Robertson just as the new green economy and its expected crush on copper is looming on the horizon.
The company announced it is turning its Hot Breccia project in Arizona into a joint venture, giving Prismo Metals Inc. (PRIZ;CSE) the option to acquire a 75% interest, so the company can turn its full attention to the site in the Sonora and Sinaloa states.
“We look forward to focusing on our high-grade, district-scale La Adelita project,” Hudson said. “The project is brilliant, we’ve got good intercepts of high-grade copper close to surface in nearly every hole we have drilled. Just as importantly, the information we’ve gathered from our 2022 program has given us a clear understanding of what’s going on. Our 2023 targets are compelling.”
Infinitum will retain a 25% interest in Hot Breccia after CA$6 million has been spent over five years.
Robertson will become chairman of the Board of Directors and current chairman Mahendra Naik will step down, Hudson said.
Hudson said he is the co-founder and managing director of a producing oil and gas company in the United States, and a non-executive director of two resource companies with copper/rare earth and iron oxide/copper-gold resources in his native Australia.
“I’ve got an amazing team,” Hudson told Streetwise Reports. "My job is to hit the streets and make sure the market shares our excitement for this project. This is a classic (carbonate replacement deposit) system with high-grade results covering an area greater than Manhattan.”
The Catalyst: ‘Exceptional’ Results
Recent results from La Adelita were “very positive,” Caesars Report newsletter editor Thibaut Lepouttre wrote last November.
One of the four holes assayed in the Phase 1 program was “even exceptional,” he wrote.
“The drill bit encountered 24.35 meters (20.60 meters true width) of 1.91% copper (Cu), 2 [grams per tonne gold (g/t Au)], and just under 41 g/t silver (Ag),” Lepouttre said. “This represents an official copper-equivalent grade of 3.71% . . . Needless to say, encountering that type of grade over an interval in excess of 20 meters on a true width basis is excellent.”
The discovery of high levels of magnetite among the high-grade copper, gold, and silver at the site should aid the company in exploring at the site. A detailed magnetometer survey should help locate more mineralization, the company said.
Recent results from La Adelita were “very positive,” Caesars Report newsletter editor Thibaut Lepouttre wrote last November.
Out of the other holes released so far, hole AD-22-0019 was the most impressive. It returned 32.25 meters of 1.01% Cu, 0.52 g/t Au, and 39.69 g/t Ag, or 1.74% copper equivalent (Cu Eq) starting at 36.65 meters downhole in the Cerro Grande zone.
La Adelita is 6,446 hectares and made up of seven mining claims. The company has identified three zones of significant copper, silver, gold, and zinc mineralization at the Cerro Grande Footwall, Las Trancas, and Pericos zones.
It’s in an excellent neighborhood, as well. Just 5 kilometers away is the past-producing silver mine Alamo Dorado, and the copper-producing Piedras Verdes mine is 60 kilometers northwest.
The company started its two-phase, 9,000-meter drilling campaign at the project last March. It’s looking for the extension of the high-grade copper, gold, and silver mineralization of the Cerro Grande zone and the recently discovered Cerro Grande Footwall zone. Mineralization there consists of chalcopyrite, bornite, and covellite.
Magnetite content is estimated to be from 15% to 75% over the 20.6-meter length of hole AD-22-0018, and iron values average 24%.
The company is working toward having a resource estimate for the site.
The Metal of Electrification
Electric vehicles (EVs) would not exist in their current form without copper — they use three times as much as cars with internal combustion engines because of the metal's electrical conductivity. The infrastructure for charging those vehicles also will require plenty of the red metal for solar cells and batteries.
Copper demand is expected to double from about 25 million metric tons (Mmt) today to about 50 Mmt by 2035.
“While a variety of metals and rare earth elements have received a great deal of attention by governments, media, think tanks, and universities, one of the most underappreciated critical minerals is also one of the most familiar and most fundamental — copper,” S&P Global wrote in a recent report, The Future of Copper. “Deeper electrification requires wires, and wires are primarily made from copper.”
According to the report, copper, “the metal of electrification,” is essential to all energy plans. Demand is expected to double from about 25 million metric tons (Mmt) today to about 50 Mmt by 2035. The amount of copper that will be required by 2050 will be more than all the copper consumed by the world between 1900 and 2021, it said.
Hudson said the shortage will be “enormous.”
“For us to keep up . . . we need to be finding a couple of (very large mines) every year and bringing them online,” he said. “It’s just not going to happen. Copper will go through the roof eventually.”
Ownership and Share Structure
Streetwise Ownership Overview*16% of the company is owned by management and insiders. 29% belongs to institutions and strategic investors. Minaurum Gold Inc. owns the most at 12%, with 6.11 million shares. The rest is retail.
Infinitum has 49.5 million shares outstanding, 33.2 million free-floating, according to the company. Its market cap is CA$3.91 million, and it trades in a 52-week range of CA$0.52 and $0.04.
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