King Copper Discovery Corp. (TBXXF)

King Copper Discovery is a small mining company hunting for copper in the Andes. It was set up as Turmalina Metals Corp. back in 2017, but rebranded to King Copper Discovery in March 2025 to sharpen its focus on its main prize: a copper exploration project in Peru. The company doesn’t mine anything yet. It doesn’t have any revenue. What it has is land with rocks that look promising and a team trying to figure out whether those rocks contain enough copper to make a mine worth building someday.

Where the company operates

The company’s primary asset is the Colquemayo Project, located in the Moquegua region of southern Peru, near the border with Arequipa. This area sits within the Andean Cordillera, a geological zone known for big, high-grade mineral deposits. The project covers 6,600 hectares. The geological setup is what geologists call a high-sulfidation lithocap system with porphyry targets—complex language for “there are multiple ways copper could be hiding in these rocks, in different forms and at different depths.”

The company also holds interests in a second project, the San Francisco property in Argentina, which includes the Don David and Santa Barbara prospects. But Colquemayo is where the action is.

What the company is looking for

Early drilling at Colquemayo has turned up some eye-catching intercepts. One hole hit 237 meters of ore grading 2.4 percent copper, which sounds small until you realise that an intersection that long and that consistently mineralised is rare. Inside that section, 161 meters ran at 3.4 percent copper. Another part of the same hole picked up 31.3 meters at 14.8 percent copper. These numbers matter because they suggest the deposit isn’t just a thin vein or a scattered pocket of metal—it looks genuinely large and genuinely rich.

The company has planned an ambitious drilling programme: 36,500 meters of work including deep holes dropping down 1,000 to 1,500 meters into the ground, targeting porphyry systems that could be even bigger than the high-sulfidation epithermal zones already identified. In mining, porphyry deposits are often enormous but lower-grade than epithermal ores, while epithermal deposits are usually smaller but higher-grade. Finding both at the same project is the dream scenario.

The team and the stage

King Copper is led by experienced mining professionals. Doug Kirwin serves as a strategic advisor and has a track record of identifying major mineral discoveries in South America. Chico Azevedo, the VP of Business Development, has worked on significant mineral projects in the region. This matters because junior mining is a people business—a small team with the right connections, geological insight, and ability to navigate Peruvian permitting and operations can find major deposits. A mediocre team with the same rocks will waste years and money.

The company is at the early exploration stage. It hasn’t completed a feasibility study, hasn’t defined a resource that would pass regulatory scrutiny, and hasn’t built anything. All that said, the early drilling results are good enough that the company is investing aggressively in more drilling to understand the deposit’s true scale and grade.

The business model and economics

King Copper has no revenue. It survives by raising capital from investors who bet that exploration will find something valuable. The company’s burn rate—the speed at which it spends money without taking any in—depends on how hard it pushes the drill. More drilling costs more money but delivers faster geological answers.

If the Colquemayo Project turns out to host a mineable deposit, the economics depend entirely on the size, grade, depth, and quality of the ore. A junior explorer like King Copper would likely develop the asset itself only if it’s very large and very high-grade, which would require tens of millions of dollars in additional funding and several years of engineering work. More often, a junior explorer who finds something valuable sells or partners with a larger mining company that has the capital and operational expertise to bring a mine into production.

The core risks

Exploration risk is paramount. Promising drill holes don’t guarantee a mineable deposit. The ore could be too scattered, too deep, or require processing that destroys its economics. Permitting risk is real in Peru, a country with a complex relationship between mining and indigenous communities and environmental groups. Political risk, commodity price risk, and funding risk all apply. If copper prices crash, investors lose interest in unproven exploration projects, and capital dries up.

How to follow the story

Track the company’s drill results, which it announces periodically on financial wires. Watch the permitted exploration programs and whether the company maintains its claims in Peru. Review its quarterly filings for cash position and burn rate. A junior mining company is only as good as its next discovery—the exploration results and the management’s ability to interpret them are everything.