Market and Competition
We define our market in two different ways, according to the end product. The first is the standard high grade copper cathode product; in this case, the main economic advantage is the ability to leach sulfides in heaps fast and efficiently made possible by the LIXS2 metallurgical process being developed by METEX. The second is the copper powder production which could alternatively be produced, an industrial product, due to its special applications in the chemical, alloy and metal powder end-user industries.
At the present time, we have no direct competition in terms of efficiency, low cost, recovery rates and capacity of our metallurgical processes. However, the alternative to our heap-leaching process, the bacterial heap-leaching in installed in a fraction of the market; some mining companies are currently developing bacterial leaching tests and/or projects. This situation, which now appears unfavorable, could in fact be beneficial in the near future when the virtues and economic advantages of our chemical heap-leaching process, for example, are fully demonstrated in the pilot test, since our process essentially would use the same physical installations with only minor changes in the production facilities. Thus, for a similar investment cost, mining companies would access a much more efficient and economically beneficial processing system.
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