Four Is a Conviction Call. It Isn't the Population.

In a recent interview on mining.com, Frank Giustra said that four world-class undeveloped copper deposits are left in non-major hands: Los Azules, Warintza, Altar and Mocoa.

Upon reading the article, and based on my post just yesterday about the lack of projects, I wanted to dig deeper.

Giustra's list is good. But we don't think it's the whole list.

So we ran his own screen against our data (criteria: copper-primary, undeveloped, held by a developer rather than a major), and ranked what came back by global contained copper.

At least a dozen deposits qualify.

Giustra's four are genuinely among the leaders: McEwen Mining's Los Azules (16.2Mt contained copper), Aldebaran Resources' Altar (14.4Mt) and Solaris Resources' Warintza (12.5Mt) rank second, third, and fifth. Copper Giant's Mocoa is smaller on pure copper, 3.5Mt, or 5.8Mt copper-equivalent.

But sitting right alongside them are:

• Cascabel (SolGold, 14.4Mt)
• Vizcachitas (Los Andes Copper, 12.1Mt)
• Valeriano (ATEX Resources, 10.3Mt)

And above all of them, Pebble (Northern Dynasty Minerals, 34.3Mt), the largest undeveloped copper resource in non-major hands anywhere, held back not by geology but by a US permitting veto.

None of this makes Giustra wrong on the thing that matters. His deeper point holds: scale is not the constraint. Grade, jurisdiction, permitting and stage are what separate a resource from a mine, and on those his four screen well. Pebble is the proof: 34 million tonnes of copper going nowhere.

"Four deposits left" is a conviction call, and a defensible one. It just isn't the population. The population is knowable, and it's bigger than four.

Every figure here is a global mineral resource traced to the company's latest filing, standardised to one basis, and checked for the traps that quietly corrupt a screen like this: copper versus copper-equivalent, endowment versus mine plan, this year's estimate versus a number three years stale.

That check is the difference between an opinion and a comp.

Less searching. More strategising.™