This article is a sponsored feature from Mining.com.au partner Alma Metals. It is not financial advice. Talk to a registered financial expert before making investment decisions.
Alma Metals (ASX:ALM) has a strong history in energy projects across Africa, but the company’s leadership – particularly Chairman Alasdair Cooke and Managing Director Frazer Tabeart – have long held a deep interest in copper.
With extensive experience working on major copper projects and junior companies with copper assets, the two saw the Covid pandemic as a strategic opportunity to pivot the company.
In 2020, Alma began acquiring copper projects in Australia, a move that aligned with their conviction in copper’s long-term fundamentals.
This strategy culminated in the 2021 joint venture (JV) on the Briggs Copper Project, which marked a turning point for the company. Through this JV, Alma owns 51% of the Briggs project and is earning up to 70% interest.
Alma Metals is now squarely focused on copper, confident that the Briggs project positions the company to support the growing global demand for the metal while creating strong value for shareholders in one of the world’s most stable mining jurisdictions.
Scale over grade
Tabeart stresses that through his role at Alma, he’s focused on projects with scale, rather than getting bogged down by grade.
“I’m not saying that high grade isn’t good, but I think the mantra of ‘grade is king’ is fundamentally flawed,” Tabeart says.
“It’s profitability and margin that are the key things. If you’ve got scale, proximity to infrastructure, and the ability to mine at low cost, then grade doesn’t matter. It’s all about if you can make a dollar.”
It is this focus on scale that really sets Alma apart.
The other focus for Alma is to be operating in good jurisdictions.
“We don’t like getting into projects that are purely grassroots or greenfields,” Tabeart says, noting that it’s very difficult to raise money for pure exploration.
“We wanted to get into something where the discovery had already been made, but maybe the opportunity hadn’t been fully recognised.”
That’s what Briggs offered to Alma. It was a discovery that was made in the 1960s, with some drilling done in the 1990s, but overall the lower grade copper scared most companies and investors away.
“Our view of the copper thematic is that with a strong copper price, those so-called low grades are actually very viable if you have the volume.”
Copper market outlook and global drivers
Copper is making a comeback, as reported by Mining.com.au. We saw record copper prices in Q4 2025, pushing as high as US$13,500 a tonne, driven by the electrification thematic, renewables, and AI data centres.
High prices are expected to stay throughout 2026, especially as near-term supply doesn’t look like it will be able to catch up with demand.
Tabeart notes that both himself and Cooke have had quite a long-term view on the market, and they’ve been waiting for the copper price to catch up.
“We think the dynamics are very encouraging,” Tabeart says.
“There’s the underlying decarbonisation thematic. All these technologies need copper as a core part of actually building the components for global decarbonisation.
“Added to that, there are quite a few problems on the supply side.”
Tabeart notes that we’re seeing strong M&A activity in the market at the moment, especially in Australia where any advanced projects of scale have been locked up by the mid-tiers or majors.
In October 2025, Harmony (JSE:HAR) completed the acquisition of MAC Copper, securing full ownership of the CSA mine in New South Wales, providing them with immediate access to copper production.
We’ve also seen Sandfire (ASX:SFR) recently move to advance the Kalkaroo Copper-Gold Project in South Australia, together with Havilah Resources (ASX:HAV).
Then there are the so-called “mega-mergers” that have been touted, involving global giants such as Rio Tinto (LSE:RIO), Glencore (LSE:GBP), Anglo American (LSE:AAL), and Teck (TSX:TECK.A).
These moves indicate to Tabeart that the majors have formed a view that copper is here to stay for the long term. They understand that permitting a large-scale mine can take time, so they are acquiring as many existing assets as they can.
“That’s the one thing that’s driving the whole narrative behind these mega mergers,” Tabeart says.
“It’s copper, copper, copper.”
Briggs: Unlocking Queensland’s copper potential
The Briggs project is Queensland’s largest undeveloped copper project, and likely in the top five in Australia, according to Alma.
The company’s mineral resource estimate (MRE) hosts 2 million tonnes of copper in inferred and indicated resources, at a 0.15% copper cut-off grade.
The current MRE is open at depth. The two million tonnes of copper identified are from the top 500-600m and Tabeart notes that there is significant upside to the south and west of the MRE as well as clear upside below the existing current resource outline, so the company believes it’s only going to grow from here.
“There’s no doubt in our mind that this is going to get to three million tonnes, maybe even four million tonnes of copper. It just requires more drilling.”
Location is key for this project as well, and Tabeart notes that Briggs is surrounded by existing high-quality infrastructure, including multiple high-voltage power lines, heavy haulage railway, gas pipelines, a major regional road (Dawson Highway), water pipelines, and it is just 60km away from the deep water port of Gladstone.
With the key infrastructure already in place, saving Alma potentially hundreds of millions in infrastructure costs, Tabeart notes that there are very few impediments to being able to develop the Briggs project.
2025 drilling confirms strong copper mineralisation
Alma conducted the deepest drilling to date at Briggs in late 2025, with assay results confirming zones of strong copper mineralisation in the locations predicted by the geological model, as reported by Mining.com.au.
Key highlights from the 2025 drilling include 620m @ 0.25% copper, 30 parts per million (ppm) molybdenum, and 0.70 grams per tonne silver from near-surface, which is the longest mineralised intersection recorded at the site. Tabeart notes that the copper is also higher than the average grade for the project.
“At a vertical depth of 500-550m, we saw a zone of about 140m at 0.35% copper on the contact between the core intrusion and the surrounding host rocks,” Tabeart says.
“This supports our analysis that the deposit is going to get deeper, it’s just a question of drilling deeper holes.
“Our geological model is very robust based on the holes that we’ve drilled. It gives us confidence that when we do our infill and step out drilling as part of our Prefeasibility Study, we should only see upside and positive results.”
Path to Prefeasibility
Alma is aiming to have the PFS completed by the end of 2027, though a lot of work needs to be done to build into this.
First, the company needs to upgrade the majority of the resource from inferred to indicated – one of the prerequisites of the JORC code to declare a mine reserve.
“We need to upgrade all of our inferred resources to indicated, and in this case, it means drilling,” Tabeart says.
“It’s going to be a big drilling program. We’re ultimately going to triple the number of meters that have been drilled to date on the project over the next two years.”
This drilling will also allow Alma to do the next phase of metallurgical testwork.
Tabeart notes that the metallurgy to date has exceeded company expectations.
“We’re getting very high recoveries at a very coarse grind size, so we’re going to build on that and cement the foundation of the project.
“One of the keys of this project is that we can process this material without having to expend a massive amount of electricity on fine grinding. The coarser the grind, the lower the costs, which means the lower the cut-off grade, the lower the strip ratio. Everything then adds to the bottom line.”
De-risking and upcoming milestones for Alma Metals
Tabeart says that the next 12 months are really about the final de-risking of the project.
He stresses that Alma is one of the few pure play copper explorers and developers listed on the ASX.
“There are very few opportunities like this on the ASX, where you get that leverage in a secure jurisdiction and with a project of such scale. You can look at some of our peers and how they’ve progressed their projects and resultant valuations. We’re following exactly the same path, just a few years behind.”
Alma aims to start their next drilling campaign in April 2026, and we should start to see the assay results flowing from June onwards.
Write to Amy Rotman at Mining.com.au
Images: Mining.com.au, Alma Metals
