Asiamet Resources Ltd on Monday said its capital expenditure estimate for the workstream relating to the Beruang Kanan Main copper project has concluded with ‘exceptionally positive results’.

Asiamet is an Indonesia-based mining company. Its wholly-owned flagship licence is the BKM copper project, located north-west of Palangkaraya, the regional capital of Central Kalimantan.

It said the updated BKM feasibility study capex estimate is $236.5 million, based on high-confidence, present-day input cost forecasts, including $26.6 million in growth allowance and contingency. This was only slightly above its capex estimate of $223.4 million from the 2019 study.

Asiamet said it considered this to be an ‘exceptional outcome in the current highly inflationary environment being experienced by mining projects globally’.

It said initiatives have also been undertaken to re-size the project and deliver a higher margin, more profitable and smaller footprint project to significantly de-risk the project capital cost.

This is ‘highly encouraging for the overall economics of the BKM copper project’, Asiamet said.

‘An enormous amount of high-quality work has been completed to deliver this capital cost estimate with the final outcome being only marginally above the 2019 pre-production capex,’ said Chief Executive Officer Darryn McClelland.

‘We have been able to deliver a capex estimate which we are confident will support a robust and commercially viable project - one that is well timed for a forecast major uptick in the copper cycle 2-3 years from now.

‘As one of the very few new sources of copper cathode into the Asian market, interest in the BKM copper project is high and the company looks forward to progressing discussions once the feasibility study is delivered.’

Shares in Asiamet were down 9.8% to 1.15 pence each in London on Monday late morning.

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