Corridor gets new name, prefeasibility date

Project Corridor, the Chilean JV formed between Teck Resources and Goldcorp, has been rebranded as NuevaUnión and is now aiming to complete the prefeasibility study during the second half of 2017.

NuevaUnión was formed out of Teck's Relincho and Goldcorp's El Morro, both of which had been stalled for years, as development of Relincho had been postponed by Teck, while El Morro had been put on hold by the local courts due to community opposition.

Initial estimates put development of the copper-gold-molybdenum project at US$3.5bn, versus previous estimations of US$3.9bn for El Morro and US$4.5bn for Relincho.

The two deposits are located 40km apart. Developing them together will allow substantial cost reductions, as the preliminary economic assessment includes a single desalination plant, port, transmission line, concentrator and tailings facility.

NuevaUnión is set to have a mine life of 32 years, while first-stage development includes a concentrator with 90,000-110,000t/d capacity to produce an average of around 190,000t copper and 315,000oz gold a year over the first 10 years.