SW US CEO chat: Gunnison Copper seeks government cash and partner

Gunnison Copper’s (TSX: GCU; US-OTC: GCUMF) role in helping reduce U.S. dependence on imported red metal now turns more on how it’s financed than on the rocks in Arizona.

Backed with an updated preliminary economic assessment (PEA) from February that gives the namesake Gunnison project an almost $2-billion ($C2.77-billion) net present value, and forecasts 3.2 billion lb. of copper cathode output over a 21-year life, the company says production could start by 2032. The site is 105 km east of Tucson.

“If the government funded something like 50%or more of the total costs between now and first production, then we would be able to accelerate the timeline by two years,” Gunnison CEO Craig Hallworth told The Northern Miner in a phone interview in July.

The revamped mine could become one of several tests of how far U.S. efforts to secure domestic supplies of critical metals – needed for AI data centres and other green‑energy technologies – will extend beyond lithium and rare earths and into copper.

Gunnison’s predecessor Excelsior Mining pursued an in-situ recovery copper mine at the site, but the operation failed to perform as expected. In 2024, the company pivoted to an open-pit heap-leach plan and renamed itself Gunnison.

The site hosts 846.1 million measured and indicated tons (767.6 million tonnes) grading 0.33% copper for about 5.2 billion lb. contained copper and 94 million inferred tons at 0.21% copper for 397 million lb. of metal, according to the updated PEA. Its post-tax internal rate of return is 23%.

Big player

At that global contained resource, Gunnison ranks among the largest undeveloped copper projects in the United States, below Hudbay Minerals’ (TSX, NYSE: HBM) Cactus project with 8 to 9 billion lb. and above Faraday’s (TSX: FDY; US-OTC: CPPKF) Copper Creek with 5 billion pounds.

At its annual output in the mine’s first 15 years of about 80,000 tonnes, Hallworth said Gunnison could supply around 10% of the U.S.’s refined copper production from ore, excluding metal from recycling.

His goal, through the company’s 42,000-metre drill program that launched in June, is to add another 1.2 billion lb. of copper to the resource. By keeping the mine life at about 20 years, throughput could be lifted to 100,000 tonnes annually.

“That’s really going to show this project is nationally significant,” Hallworth said.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the country relied on imports for 57% of its copper last year, according to its Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 report, released in May.

“This is a major project, and it can really move the needle on closing the [supply] deficit,” Hallworth said. “Fifty-seven percent is coming from foreign sources. That’s risky, and for something like copper – it’s used in just about everything.”

$1.54B price

Standing between now and 220 million lb. of annual production are a couple stages of economic studies, amended permitting and lots of cash. The updated PEA put Gunnison’s initial capital costs at $1.54 billion, an 18% rise from the initial study.

“It’s $1.6 billion in construction capital, and there’s a number of dollars required to get to construction too. That’s a tough amount of money to raise when you’re sitting at US$150 million market cap,” Hallworth said.

Gunnison’s conservative development path would see the company release a prefeasibility study (PFS) in 2028, followed by a feasibility study and then a final investment decision by the middle of 2030 before first production in 2032.

But if a government agency, such as the Department of Energy (DOE) or War offered $1 billion under a long-term debt facility, Gunnison could skip a PFS and go straight to a feasibility, Hallworth said.

“That’s the type of number that we’re talking for us to accelerate it by two years,” he said. “There’s government grants that can be used that could help us accelerate, probably [not by] two years, but it can definitely increase the probability of success that we can build this ourselves and not have to sell this project to a foreign company.”

Federal backing

Support to the tune of $1 billion isn’t unprecedented in an era where governments recognize the need to build critical metal supply chains outside Beijing’s control.

The DOE in 2024 announced a $2.26-billion loan to finance the first stage of Lithium Americas’ (TSX, NYSE: LAC) Thacker Pass mine in Nevada. It later amended the amount to $2.23 billion.

In June, the Department of Defense (DoD) offered a conditional loan of $725 million to Energy Fuels (TSX: EFR: NYSE-A UUUU) to help it develop its rare earth processing capacity. And in July 2025, the department made a $400-million equity investment in rare earths miner MP Materials (NYSE: MP), as well as a $150-million loan.

However, copper projects, despite their central role in electrification and infrastructure, have so far been left out of the largest U.S. support packages.

In addition to the current heap‑leach plan for Gunnison, Hallworth said the company is considering adding a concentrator for the deeper sulphide zones, which he said could lift copper recoveries from about 60% to 80–85%.

A flotation circuit would also allow the company to produce zinc and silver concentrates from material that is not included in the present PEA, though any polymetallic flowsheet remains at the study stage.

“With the concentrator process, this would become a polymetallic project because we’ve got over 800 million lb. of zinc and over 9 million oz. of silver that we know about,” Hallworth said. “That’s an enormous amount of value, maybe $2 billion on a revenue line in those two metals that are not in the current value.”

JV partner

Gunnison’s alternate path to production is finding a joint venture partner. At the economics of its current PEA, a partner could be a mid-tier copper producer with a market capitalization around $10 billion, Hallworth said.

“I won’t name names, but there’s several that have existing platforms in Arizona,” he said.

Potential partners within that description that have the scale and technical expertise to develop a large U.S. copper project could include Capstone Copper (TSX: CS), which is advancing its Mantoverde-Santo Domingo copper district in Chile and weighing a final investment decision on Santo Domingo later this year.

There are also Hudbay, which is expanding its U.S. copper platform through its Copper World project in Arizona and the proposed acquisition of Arizona Sonoran Copper’s Cactus project; and KGHM Polska Miedź (WSE: KGH), the Polish copper producer that operates the Robinson mine in Nevada and has longstanding North American mining experience.

If Gunnison can raise its production profile to 100,000 tonnes annually in a PFS, partnering with companies in the $10-$30-billion market cap range becomes possible, the CEO added.

Data centres

Meanwhile, just 2 km north of Gunnison and across the interstate 10 highway is the company’s Johnson Camp Mine (JCM).

Though its resource is much smaller than Gunnison’s, the heap leach mine produced its first copper cathodes in August 2025, making it the country’s newest red metal producer. Last December, JCM was the first site to produce cathode using Rio Tinto (NYSE, LSE, ASX: RIO) venture partner Nuton’s sulphide bioleaching technology.

Among the buyers of the 4,500-lb. pure copper cathode bundles that come out of production at JCM is Amazon Web Services.

“This is copper that would have had to been shipped overseas before, with all of the freight costs, the emissions, with penalties at the smelter, and then the country loses control of the copper at that point,” Hallworth said.

“We just make the finished thing right here, and then it goes right into those Amazon data centres.”