Mining Stock Education · Wednesday, July 15, 2026
Dr. Rob Stevens explains that oxide mineral deposits, often formed by weathering, can be cheaper to mine and process than primary sulfide deposits, potentially offering faster development and earlier cash flow. However, he cautions that factors like grade, recovery rates, and deposit size are crucial for overall economic viability, and not all oxide deposits (like bauxite or nickel laterites) share the same economic advantages as copper and gold oxides.
“So in this case, the metals are contained in oxide minerals. So if we look at copper, mineral such as, uh, cuprite, uh, or malachite, uh, although malachite is actually a copper carbonate mineral, but it's produced through a weathering, uh, copper converts from sulfide into these oxide or, uh, carbonate minerals.”
“So processing and recovery is a key part. Why, you know, what is the difference between these deposits and from an economic point of view? Uh, well, sulfide ores are processed using a fairly conventional, uh, crushing, grinding, uh, flotation and smelting for copper, uh, or cyanideation, uh, with gold.”
“Uh, oxide minerals on the other hand, uh, are processed by crushing, uh, and then usually heap leaching. So it does not require, uh, a grinding phase. Just the crushing, uh, and then it would go to carbon absorption for for gold or solvent extraction, uh, for copper, uh, and then electro winning to be able to recover the metals out of that.”
“Uh, and so, uh, while it is an oxide deposit, it's not necessarily, uh, cheaper or easier to process than, say, some of the sulfide ores of other metals.”