Harmony plans to spend about $78 million on exploration at the Eva copper project and regional tenements this financial year.

The South African company acquired the tenement package, about 75km north-east of Cloncurry, in December last year.

In its annual reporting, Harmony said it had drilled 123 holes for 17,044m by June and spent about $13 million on exploration.

Drilling remains in progress with three drill rigs on-site.

The Eva copper project comprises five mining leases (142.8sq km), 17 exploration permits (2,350sq km) and two exploration permit applications (190sq km).

The proposed Eva operation would involve mining native copper and copper sulphide ore from six open pits and processing it through a copper concentrator, with a projected mine life of more than 15 years.

While previous owner Copper Mountain Mining declared a mineral reserve at Eva, Harmony has said it will take about 18 months to address the risks and opportunities identified in the due diligence and to update the feasibility study.

The mineral resources at the north-west Queensland tenement package stood at 1.5Mt copper and 77koz gold as at June 30.

Harmony’s stated objectives for Eva include:

• Expand the resource and reserve base to leverage infrastructure planned for the Eva copper project
• Delineate high-grade ore zones or satellite deposits
• Develop a balanced project and exploration portfolio to sustain growth

The company plans to continue brownfields exploration drilling on mining lease tenure this financial year to develop historical resource areas at Legend, Longamundi and Great Southern.

It aims to identify and prioritise high-grade satellite ore feed targets for prospect development/drill testing within 100km of infrastructure planned for the Eva copper project.

Harmony also said a regional gravity survey would be conducted to integrate with results from the magnetotelluric geophysical survey completed in FY23.

Along with exploration work, Harmony is optimising the mine design as well as the process plant design for the Eva operation.

“A strong project team has been established, based in Brisbane and Cloncurry, leveraging highly experienced consultants and contractors,” the company states in its annual reporting.

“The project is fully permitted, although there may be potential amendments based on feasibility recommendations. We anticipate the declaration of Harmony’s maiden reserve upon the successful conclusion of the feasibility study.”