Pivotal Metals Ltd. has announced a 42 per cent increase to the mineral resource estimate at its Horden Lake project in Quebec, Canada, validating its potential to become a large-scale open-pit copper mine.
The company revealed that the updated JORC-compliant resource now stands at 52 million tonnes grading 1.05 per cent copper equivalent (CuEq), yielding a substantial 549,000 tonnes of contained metal.
The vast majority of the expanded resource sits near the surface. Approximately 87 per cent of the total resource tonnage, amounting to 45 million tonnes at 1.07 per cent CuEq, is now captured inside a single conceptual open-pit shell.
The volume of in-pit contained copper metal alone climbed by 30 per cent to 256,000 tonnes, offering an excellent foundation for a long-life, scalable mining scenario amidst record-high global copper prices.
Pivotal Managing Director Ivan Fairhall said the upgrade underwrites a project of considerable strategic scale in a global market plagued by structural supply deficits.
“When we drill Horden Lake, it gets bigger,” Fairhall said.
“Importantly, the growth has come from drilling a small portion of the undrilled conductive horizon, with the deposit wide open and multiple priority electromagnetic targets still untested.”
The updated MRE materially strengthens the development case for Horden Lake by increasing scale while maintaining grade and demonstrating potential for a large open-pit mining scenario.
The asset’s commercial appeal is further strengthened by substantial precious metal by-product credits, including 237,000 ounces of gold, 17 million ounces of silver, and 312,000 ounces of platinum and palladium.
Recent metallurgical testing confirmed that these by-products successfully report to highly marketable, clean copper concentrates via standard flotation processing circuits.
The expanded resource paves a clear path for Pivotal to deliver its highly anticipated scoping study, which is firmly on track for release in the third quarter of 2026.
Located in a tier-one jurisdiction, the asset benefits from all-weather highway access and proximity to Quebec’s low-carbon hydroelectric grid.
