Anglo Asian Contracts Worley Europe for Azerbaijan Copper Feasibility Studies

Azerbaijan's Copper Moment: Why Heap Leach Technology Could Rewrite the Country's Mining Identity

The global copper industry is undergoing a quiet but consequential geographic shift. As established mining districts in Chile, Peru, and the Democratic Republic of Congo face deepening resource nationalism, water stress, and grade deterioration, investors and developers are scanning less-travelled terrain for the next generation of scalable copper assets. The South Caucasus, long overshadowed by its oil and gas legacy, is beginning to register on that radar in a meaningful way.

At the centre of this emerging story is a pair of copper deposits in Azerbaijan that collectively host a resource base exceeding one million tonnes of copper metal. Anglo Asian contracts Worley Europe for two copper feasibility studies in Azerbaijan, a decision that signals the company has moved well beyond the exploratory phase and is now constructing the technical architecture for mine development.

From Gold Producer to Copper Developer: The Strategic Pivot Behind the Numbers

Anglo Asian Mining has historically been known as an AIM-listed gold, copper, and silver producer operating within Azerbaijan's Gedabek contract area. Its track record in the country spans multiple operating cycles, and the company has developed a nuanced understanding of the local regulatory, logistical, and geological environment over many years.

However, the company's forward-looking strategy represents a meaningful departure from its gold-dominant identity. The Xarxar and Garadag copper deposits are not incremental bolt-ons to the existing operation. They are being positioned as the twin pillars of a transformation toward becoming a midtier, multi-asset copper and gold producer, a classification that implies a substantial uplift in production scale, asset diversification, and capital deployment.

This strategic repositioning reflects broader industry logic. Porphyry copper systems, which are the geological archetype most relevant to deposits like Xarxar and Garadag, are known for their large tonnage and relatively consistent grade profiles. Furthermore, this geological profile is similar to that seen in a major copper system elsewhere. While individual grades may appear modest compared with high-grade vein-hosted deposits, the sheer scale of mineralisation in porphyry systems allows for long-life, low-cost operations when the right processing route is selected.

Understanding the Heap Leach and SX-EW Process: A Step-by-Step Technical Breakdown

The choice of heap leach combined with solvent extraction and electrowinning (SX-EW) as the proposed processing methodology for both Xarxar and Garadag is not incidental. It reflects a careful matching of ore mineralogy with processing economics and regional infrastructure realities. The copper leaching process used here is a hydrometallurgical route particularly well-suited to oxide and transitional copper ores, producing finished copper cathode directly at the mine site.

The process works in a logical sequence:

1. Run-of-mine or crushed ore is placed onto engineered, lined heap leach pads.
2. A dilute acidic solution, typically sulphuric acid, is distributed across the ore surface through drip emitters or sprinklers.
3. The acid dissolves soluble copper minerals as it percolates through the ore stack, creating what is known in the industry as pregnant leach solution (PLS).
4. PLS is collected at the base of the pad and pumped to the SX-EW plant.
5. In the solvent extraction circuit, copper ions are selectively transferred from the PLS into an organic solvent, separating them from impurities.
6. The concentrated copper solution is then introduced to the electrowinning circuit, where electrical current deposits pure copper metal onto stainless steel cathode blanks.
7. The resulting product is London Metal Exchange (LME)-grade copper cathode, typically 99.99% pure, a directly tradeable, high-value commodity.

The contrast with conventional flotation-based copper processing is significant, particularly in a market context:

Why SX-EW Is Particularly Relevant in an Azerbaijani Context

Azerbaijan has no domestic copper smelting infrastructure. This is a critical point that is often underappreciated by investors evaluating the project economics. A conventional flotation-based copper operation in Azerbaijan would require shipping copper concentrate to overseas smelters, incurring treatment and refining charges (TC/RC), shipping costs, and payability deductions that can collectively reduce the realised copper price by a material percentage.

Heap leach SX-EW eliminates this value leakage entirely. The copper cathode produced is a finished, LME-registered product that can be sold directly to end users, fabricators, or traded on the open market. For a jurisdiction without smelting infrastructure, this is not merely a processing preference. It is a fundamental economic enabler.

Furthermore, if Anglo Asian successfully brings either Xarxar or Garadag into production using this method, it would mark the first time copper metal has ever been produced in Azerbaijan, as distinct from copper concentrate. That represents a step-change in the country's copper value chain and has long-term implications for how the industry develops across the region.

Worley Europe's Appointment and What a Rigorous Selection Process Signals

The appointment of Worley Europe as lead engineering contractor for both feasibility studies followed a competitive selection process described as rigorous. Worley, headquartered in Australia, is one of the world's largest engineering, procurement, and project management firms, with documented in-country experience in Azerbaijan stretching back to 2016.

In mining project finance, the credibility of the feasibility study engineer matters almost as much as the technical findings themselves. Lenders and institutional investors scrutinise who produced the study, not just what it concludes.

The scope of work that Worley Europe is expected to deliver across both feasibility studies is comprehensive, encompassing:

• Metallurgical testwork review and process design confirmation
• Heap leach pad engineering, liner system specification, and pad sequencing
• SX-EW plant configuration and sizing for anticipated throughput rates
• Infrastructure scoping, including water supply, reagent logistics, power, and site access
• Capital and operating cost estimation to bankable feasibility standard
• Environmental and social baseline data integration into project design

Each definitive feasibility study is sequenced rather than run simultaneously, with Xarxar targeted for completion by mid-2027 and Garadag by the first half of 2028. This staggered approach is technically astute. Learnings from the Xarxar study — including metallurgical data, process design decisions, and cost benchmarks — can be directly applied to optimise the Garadag study, potentially reducing both cost and timeline for the second project.

The 90,000-Metre Drilling Programme: Confidence Expressed in Metres

The drilling programs planned across 2026 and 2027 total 90,000 metres and are not a speculative exploration exercise. At this scale, running concurrently with formal feasibility studies, they reflect a high-conviction development approach where the company is simultaneously de-risking its resource base and feeding critical geotechnical and metallurgical data into the engineering studies.

The programme is divided into two functional categories:

As of mid-2026, two drill rigs are already operational at Xarxar, with Garadag drilling scheduled to commence in the third quarter of 2026. The geographic spread of the exploration component is deliberately broad:

• Xarxar and Garadag extensions: Targeting lateral and depth extensions of the known mineralised footprints to potentially grow the combined resource beyond its current one-million-tonne copper metal threshold.
• Gedabek contract area follow-up drilling: Testing extensions of the established mineralised system within the company's primary operating licence.
• Demirli mine and Demirli South: Pursuing lateral and vertical extensions of a known deposit to expand its development potential.
• Gilar underground programme: Drilling focused on upper-level targets and extensions of the deposit's deeper mineralised zones, which carry distinct grade and geometry characteristics.

What Investors Should Understand About Porphyry Copper Exploration

Porphyry copper deposits are among the most important ore deposit types in the global copper supply chain, accounting for the majority of the world's mined copper production. They are typically characterised by large, low-to-moderate grade mineralised zones, often with associated gold, molybdenum, or silver by-products. Consequently, their exploration and development follow a distinct logic, and interpreting drill results correctly is essential for investors evaluating progress:

• Early-stage drilling defines the envelope of mineralisation.
• Infill drilling raises the confidence classification of resources from inferred to indicated and ultimately to measured categories under frameworks such as JORC or NI 43-101.
• Geotechnical drilling informs pit slope design, which directly affects strip ratios and therefore operating costs.
• Metallurgical testwork drilling selects representative samples across the deposit's variability domains to validate processing assumptions in the feasibility study.

The 35,000 metres allocated to feasibility study drilling at Xarxar and Garadag is specifically designed to satisfy these technical requirements, ensuring that the Worley Europe study rests on a robust, multi-domain dataset rather than a single-phase drill programme.

Key Milestones, Metrics, and What Comes Next

Once both feasibility studies are completed, Anglo Asian would possess the technical foundation necessary to progress toward construction financing decisions, project permitting, and mine development sequencing. The company's VP Stephen Westhead has indicated clearly that the combined drilling and feasibility programme is oriented toward enabling mine construction, framing these studies as a direct precursor to development rather than as standalone research or scoping exercises.

The Broader Significance for Azerbaijan's Mining Sector

There is an often-overlooked dimension to this story that extends beyond Anglo Asian's corporate strategy. Azerbaijan's economy has historically been defined by its hydrocarbon sector, and its mining industry, while active, has operated largely in the shadow of oil and gas revenues. The prospect of producing finished copper cathode within the country introduces a new model of extractive industry value retention.

For context, copper cathode commands full LME pricing, whereas copper concentrate is subject to complex pricing formulas that deduct smelter treatment charges, refining charges, and penalties for deleterious elements. In practice, concentrate sellers typically realise between 85% and 96% of the contained copper value, depending on contract terms and smelter location. Cathode producers, however, retain the full value. Over the life of a large copper mine, that differential compounds into a very substantial economic advantage.

Anglo Asian's exploration licence areas also retain considerable undiscovered mineral potential, according to the company's own assessment. If the Xarxar and Garadag programmes succeed, they could catalyse a broader re-evaluation of Azerbaijan's copper prospectivity, potentially attracting additional capital and technical expertise to a jurisdiction that has historically been under-explored relative to its geological endowment.

Should both feasibility studies confirm robust project economics, Anglo Asian's transition from a single-jurisdiction gold producer to a dual-commodity, multi-asset copper and gold operator would represent a meaningful re-rating catalyst. However, investors should note that feasibility studies are technical assessments, not construction commitments, and outcomes remain subject to commodity price assumptions, metallurgical variability, and capital market conditions at the time of any development decision. This does not constitute financial advice.

The appointment of Worley Europe, the scale of the concurrent drilling programme, and the explicit framing of these studies as construction-enabling exercises collectively suggest that Anglo Asian contracts Worley Europe for two copper feasibility studies in Azerbaijan not as a distant aspiration, but as an engineered pathway with a defined timeline and a credible technical team behind it.

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