Matthew Hope
Regional Exploration Manager - New Opportunities
First Quantum Minerals
After starting a career in geophysics with Fugro Airborne I quickly came to love exploration geology, later completing a Masters in Ore Deposit Geology at the University of Western Australia.
I have had the opportunity to work across commodities, with a focus on Nickel, Gold and Copper in diverse geographies from the high Andes of Chile to the jungles of Papua New Guinea. Working for BHP, Barrick and now First Quantum Minerals has given me a varied view of the mining industry.
Currently my role aims to identify new opportunities for the business across the exploration and mining stages.
Project activities are presently focussed on Finland, Austral and Kazakhstan with a global watching brief for emerging jurisdictions. If you have a great project, we'd love to hear about it.
First Quantum Minerals - A History of Sediment Hosted Copper Mining & Exploration, how this lead us to Kazakhstan
First Quantum Minerals (FQM) roots go back to the Central Africa Copper Belt exploring and mining in both Zambia and the DRC for sediment hosted copper deposits.
From initial operations reprocessing tailing in 1996, to discovering and developing large mining assets including the Kansanshi and Sentinel operations which currently produce ~ xxxkt copper per year.
Whilst we have expanded our reach into porphyry copper, IOCG and VMS we see sediment hosted copper as our technical advantage. Few basins have demonstrated the capacity to generate world class sediment hosted copper deposits, the rare system can be vast and of grades of copper that exceed most other larger ore systems.
At FQM we are continually refining our understanding of these deposits, their formational environments and exploration approaches. Alongside our technical studies is a dynamic review of the changing international environment for investment. These factors have led us to commencing activities in Kazakhstan.
During my presentation I hope to share some of our rationale and experiences throughout this process.
