Although not listed as a mineral critical to U.S. national security and the economy, copper “will see its value soar” as the energy transition gains momentum, according to experts.
American Pacific Mining Corp USGDF is capitalizing on that transition with its portfolio of high-grade precious and base metal projects backed by three major mining partners, namely Rio Tinto RIO, Centerra Gold, Inc CGAU and Dowa Metals & Mining.
“Copper is what’s going to drive this EV revolution. There is literally not enough copper in the world today to do what all these mandates are for the EV revolution,” Warwick Smith, CEO and director of American Pacific told Benzinga in a recent interview.
Smith On the Importance of Copper: “A gasoline-powered car on average has 18 pounds of copper. An EV has 83. And if you drive a Tesla, it’s got 138 pounds of copper. So, it’s an awful lot of copper. There are 700,000 EVs on the road today and they’re saying by 2028 they want 4.5 million,” Smith said.
Copper will not only be needed for the EV revolution but to produce all forms of clean energy, including wind, solar and nuclear power, which Smith pointed out. American Pacific plans to help meet that demand.
“We’re sitting with 14 million tons up in Alaska that we think can get significantly larger at almost 4% copper. So, it puts us in a very strong position. And you’ve got your end user as a partner who owns the largest smelter, so that it works well from that perspective for sure,” Smith said.
“If you’re going to go green, you’re going green via copper, that’s the only way that it's going to end up working. And there’s no substitute for it either.
American Pacific owns nine projects, all in the U.S., containing not only copper assets but gold, silver and zinc, the latter of which is in high demand for the energy transition while supply is historically low.
Watch: Warwick Smith Talks Copper With Benzinga
How American Pacific Is Positioned In The Energy Revolution: American Pacific’s Palmer VMS Project, located in Southeast Alaska, hosts two NI 43-101 compliant resources containing copper and zinc, as well as gold and silver, and Dowa owns a 55% stake in the operation, which significantly de-risks the project.
The company also owns past-producing Madison Mine, a high-grade copper-gold project in Montana, in which Rio Tinto holds an interest.
“I mean, we’re working with Dowa in Alaska, Rio Tinto down in Montana and now Centerra in Nevada. They’re all multi-billion dollar companies that, before they spend a dollar, they want to know [that] they believe that they can find (metals) and that if and when they find it, that they can put it in production,” Smith said.
Due to American Pacific being backed by mining majors, the company has no problem funding its drilling projects and spends far more on exploration than most other juniors. In comparison, more than half of American Pacific’s market cap is being spent on exploration.
“Most companies our size are maybe spending $2 million or $3 million at the most on exploration. We’re getting over 10 times that (from its partners). So, when investors are looking at companies, you want to find ones that are busy creating value,” Smith said.
"We often say to people, if you’re a family office, a small fund or a retail investor and you’re interested in junior mining stocks, look at ones that already have majors involved because in a lot of ways they’ve done a lot of the due diligence for you," he said. "And obviously, that’s the case with us."
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