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Faraday to drill at BHP's former San Manuel copper mine in Arizona
Faraday Copper plans at least 23,000 metres of confirmation drilling starting in the fourth quarter, after its San Manuel acquisition closes this month.
Faraday Copper expects to move forward with confirmation drilling at BHP’s former San Manuel mine in Arizona to support a combined Arizona copper resource of more than 18 billion pounds, the company said. The San Manuel acquisition is set to close this month, bringing Faraday control of a past-producing copper operation, about 109 square kilometers of prospective private land, a water-supply agreement, and established infrastructure near the Copper Creek project, about two hours southeast of Phoenix.
Faraday plans at least 23,000 metres of drilling at San Manuel beginning in the fourth quarter, then expects to issue a combined resource estimate around mid-2027. The company said the deal would shift it from a single-project explorer toward a district developer model, with plans for two open pits and two underground mines around shared infrastructure.
The company also noted the work remaining to validate the historic estimates. San Manuel’s remaining copper estimate is based on historical drilling, the old drill core was discarded, and the combined mine plan has not been studied yet, meaning Faraday must drill new holes before incorporating San Manuel into a current technical study.
Faraday’s shares have jumped over the past year alongside rising copper prices, quadrupling to close at $5.50 on Aug. 11, and it reported a market capitalization of about $1.6 billion. The San Manuel operation began underground production in 1955, later adding open-pit and in-situ leaching, and processed about 800 million tonnes at 0.66% copper before mining ended in 1999, with BHP rehabilitating the site by 2003, according to Mining.com.
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