Title: +730% and the CEO Says It Hasn't Even Started — Copper Giant's 1.1 Billion-Tonne Bet Show: Inside Mining (ITM Trading) — interviewer unnamed on the recording Guest: Ian Harris (President & CEO, Copper Giant Resources; Mocoa copper-moly project, Colombia) Date: 2026-09-20 (YouTube publishDate); filmed on site at Mocoa during a site visit, ~day 32 of Colombia's new presidency URL: https://youtu.be/-U86r2anmz0 Length: 22:54 Note: YouTube auto-transcript pasted by Stephen; fillers (um/uh, "you know" interjections, contentless "like") and stutters/false starts removed; wording otherwise verbatim; (mm:ss) cues kept in place. ">>" marks a speaker change. Auto-transcript garbles fixed: "Mako/Makoa"=Mocoa, "Traffy Guru"=Trafigura, "Daenerius"=Dundee (as heard; the investor name is unconfirmed), "Frank Gustra"=Frank Giustra, "Robert Fre"=Robert Friedland, "Cordovahu with Alicron"=Cordoba's Alacrán, "COP J"=COPJ, "VR Garson"=as heard (a regional airport ~30 min from site; name unconfirmed), "pea/PA"=PEA. Harris is the company's CEO talking his own book.
00:03 Hi everyone, welcome back to this edition of Inside Mining. Joining me today, Ian Harris, the man behind Copper Giant. And this is a story a lot of people have been watching over the last year. Copper Giant is up about 730%. Had to rub my eyes when I looked at that, Ian. And you say it hasn't even started to climb yet.
00:27 Mocoa is now a 1.1 billion ton copper-moly resource. You've got Trafigura on a long-term offtake, Dundee as a major shareholder, Frank Giustra backing it. I'm just excited. I see you're excited. What do you think the market is finally starting to see here with the project? >> Well, in the past the project had a very, very, very low valuation because there weren't enough believers, right? So it's only now getting to a track of where it should be valued. And I think that's
01:02 going on, and really the biggest overhang historically on the company was two things. One, that we were 600 million tons, and people said, well, it's big but it's not big enough. So we passed that back in November of last year. But the big one was Colombia, right? We just went through four years under a not-so-friendly administration.
01:25 But in the background there were people that said the policy, the underlying legislation, really hasn't changed. It's just been the mouthpiece, right? And so we had an election, and then we have a new president coming in in August, and people said, well, let's wait and see what's going to happen.
01:41 But he is officially on day 32 of his administration, and he has come out extremely, extremely strong. Just yesterday signing a new agreement with the United States, an MOU to advance, really focused on what we've been talking about a long time: securing supply chains. So it just keeps getting better, and people say not only does Mocoa have a chance to be a mine, it's got a better chance than most at becoming a mine before many others.
02:13 So I think that's obviously very, very exciting for us. >> Yeah, I'm obviously very familiar with what's going on in Colombia and followed that, and know that this will be a true game-changer for mining in the country. Before we go any further, you're boots on the ground today and there's a lot of action behind you. Can you just set the stage? I know you're so excited for today, but what's going on behind you there, Ian? >> Well, I always get excited when I get the chance to actually come to site and look at core and talk to the people and see how
02:42 things are going. But obviously there's a lot more attention. We have a big site visit going on right now, and so I'm actually at the Mocoa project. Where I'm standing today is what we call the Y. It's where our big core shack is. We can take up to about a kilometer and a half of core there.
03:01 So it's being logged, it's being cut, it's being analyzed, it's being checked, and then it goes on to the laboratory. At the beginning of the year we've gone from one to two to three, and now we're actually mobilizing — by the end of the month we'll have a fourth drill on site.
03:15 So there's a lot of work going on. But I'm also excited because in the past you had to hope for a nice drill hole or hope who gets elected, and today it's all about execution, because we have a nice pathway. We know how we can create a lot of value just advancing the project towards a construction decision, and we know we can do it.
03:32 So it's just about being disciplined and executing on that. So seeing it actually live with your own eyes, that it's going on and it's happening, and the amazing quality of the team that this project has attracted, is very exciting. That's the reason why I have such a big smile on my face. >> Yeah.
03:47 Well, let's get back to basics here and talk some numbers. Let's start with the deposit. Mocoa: 1.1 billion tons, with room you say to keep growing. That's a rare size for an undeveloped copper-moly system. What makes that scale matter in this market, and where do you still see the resource expanding here? >> Yeah, so there's something very special about copper projects.
04:08 Once you hit that billion-ton threshold, it's important for two reasons. One, then you get on the eyeballs of all the major, major companies and even countries, right? They start paying attention, because that's a scale that can actually matter. The second part of it, which is important especially as a mining engineer, is that you would rarely ever design a project bigger than that to start.
04:29 So even if we go from one to two to three, you already say that's the starter project. That's the first 20 years of a project that you're already looking at. So you can really get into the designing of what the project is. So it's why I said when we were around 600 million tons I called it the Mr. Miyagi problem.
04:45 Right? If you're small enough, you can build it yourself. You're okay. If you're big enough, then it becomes the interest of many people to want to see it developed. In between, you're squashed like a grape. So that first threshold we passed in November of last year was a big catalyst for the company.
04:59 But the obvious one is Colombia. And I just have to say it, especially — Mark Gibson is one of our directors. He was the chief geophysicist of Robert Friedland, worked with him for 15 years, COO of Cordoba and of Ivanhoe Electric, right? And he says it's just because there's so few places on the planet that have the endowment potential of Colombia and are not explored yet, or are underexplored, that have that potential to be a prolific copper district. And now you have a
05:28 political will. You have a market that's paying attention. You have commodity prices where they are. And I share Frank's excitement. He says this will be the jurisdiction everybody will be paying attention to in the next four years. It will be a boom. And you can feel it.
05:44 It's only been 30 days under this presidency and already the change is dramatic for everybody here. >> I call Frank the soothsayer, and he's just somehow always right. So if he says it, you've got to believe it. You've been on the show before, Ian, but for the viewers back at home who perhaps missed that conversation: why has copper taken off drastically this year, why is it getting so much airtime, why is it vital?
06:17 What would you say? >> So there's a few special conditions. One is the price is finally getting what it deserves, because traders don't think that far ahead of time, right? So the long-term fundamentals have been in play for a while. This is normally a cyclical business, but it's obvious that there's a massive structural change.
06:36 In the past we just took big mines and we said, ah, let's just make them a little bit bigger. The grade goes down, and we were squeezing the blood out of a turnip. So copper has several problems. A, there's not enough deposits. And the deposits that have been discovered recently are very deep underground.
06:54 So it means they take a long time to get into production. So if you look on the supply side — one of the slides I saw recently was: you are at the highest price you've ever seen in copper, and this year they're expecting total production to go down. So if you say, well, higher prices is how you incentivize it — we're at a record high price and it wasn't enough to incentivize it, which tells you a lot more about where price is going.
07:11 On the other side is the demand side, right? Copper is the metal of electrification. The reason that we can have this conversation, the reason the lights turn on when you flip that switch, is because an electron traveled over copper, and that's still 90% of the use.
07:34 And that was just a nice every-year thing: everybody wants to move from poverty to the middle class as our economies and nations develop. But now layered on top of it is that you have the energy transition. You have the move to more sustainable energy and electric vehicles, right? So I don't know if everybody knows, but every single one of those Teslas is filled with copper inside of those electric motors.
07:54 So not only do you have those big electric motors that are filled with copper, you also have to get the power to them to fill them up. And then the third one is the data centers and AI, which is the future economy that everybody's looking at, and probably the reason why you see such concern from nations over copper, right? Because it's a race. It's a race of who has the fastest computer, whose economy is going to be expanding.
08:15 You've got massive deficits, and then you keep hearing the words "the only way we can do it is grow out of it." And really, that is one of the few solutions you have for really making the economy grow quickly. It all requires copper. And then we looked around and we said, uh-oh, we've globalized everything. We've de-risked everything.
08:33 And we gave it all away to foreign factories, especially one very, very, very big one. And then they're basically saying there's not enough, I'm going to use it just for me. And so you saw it even in yesterday's agreement between Colombia and the United States. It specifically says something we've talked about, but you don't hear it very often in the mainstream news.
08:54 It is about securing critical supply chains. And that's what it's all about, right? If you don't have copper, you can't make electric vehicles. You can't make new houses. You can't do a lot. You can't keep growing, or fix the extremely old, burdened infrastructure of the United States, which needs to be rebuilt.
09:10 You hear about the power demands that are required to keep the economy moving, and one of the things that we need to do it is copper, and it's in every single one of those supply chains. So that's why copper is so critical, right? Because it's in every single one of them. You need copper.
09:26 So if you don't have copper, you're not going to be able to achieve it. You're not going to be able to fix the old infrastructure. You're not going to be able to build new light switches. You're not going to be able to build new electric vehicles, and you're definitely not going to be able to do new data centers. >> And I do find it interesting, Ian, the timing of it all.
09:41 The US needs those allies like Colombia for these strategic minerals such as copper, especially with this current feud with Canada, right? So they need to look elsewhere. >> Yeah, that's very true. First, about 60% of the world's smelting capacity is already in China. But then you look at that problem and you say, okay, we build some new smelters — well, how are we going to feed these new smelters? That becomes the overall issue. So I think the United States having a very pro-America
10:15 president in Colombia is huge, because Colombia is historically the number one ally of the United States in South America. And it's also the longest-running democracy. It's also extremely close to the United States, right? It's on the northern part of South America. So from a logistical point of view, either you're going to Miami or you're going to Los Angeles, right? You have access to both of those major ports.
10:40 So everything is aligning. And then you see why the United States is going to be pushing quickly, strengthening this relationship, because — the other thing that I like quoting Frank on — he says, don't buy what the countries tell you to buy, buy what the countries are buying.
10:57 So the lid is finally coming off, because I think everybody's been very concerned for a while, but now it's sort of like, nope, we've got to take action. It's definitely showing our weakness, but we have to have these materials. We have to reconnect and reshore the supply chains that we're concerned about losing, because in the past, when you had excess supply, it didn't create a problem.
11:20 The second that you have more demand than supply, that is the major problem, right? That's when everybody becomes concerned. >> Talk to me about the Trafigura angle, because you signed the 10-year offtake with them covering 20% of future copper and moly concentrate. That's a significant vote of confidence this early.
11:40 How much of a game-changer was that partnership for Copper Giant? >> Yeah. The biggest one is obviously the message, right? We're going to be putting out a PEA by the end of the year. So we don't even have a PEA done yet, right? And then the second-largest trader in the world is saying, I don't care.
12:00 I need to make sure that I've got my foot in the door. Which tells you how tight things are, right? And it actually happened the day before the inauguration, which was no surprise to me. The days after the inauguration, everybody and their brother is going to be in Colombia.
12:20 So they said, we need the supply. We care about having the offtake. That's what their business is. And they're saying it's not going to be easy. We talked before about that musical chairs event. There's so few deposits that when things start to move, it's going to be a scramble, right? Because there's definitely more companies than there are deposits that can get into production.
12:42 But the other one that I would like to point out, because it might not be as evident, is we have a political window. We have a huge political window of not just a company but a president with a whip on her back going, go do it extremely well, but we are going to be your partner and we want to see this actually happen. Which allows us to have an extreme advantage of actually being able to get this into production. It's near surface.
13:07 The infrastructure is in place. You've got the political will. You've got the commodity cycle all happening. So despite only very shortly being able to do a PEA, we can actually get closer to a construction decision than most, because — the fourth part, I can't remember what number I'm on — in Colombia you can basically submit for your environmental license after a PFS level, which we are probably a little over a year away from.
13:33 And then you look at Cordoba with Alacrán: they've got their permit in basically a year under process. So can you imagine how it could go, and they're talking about accelerating right now. So we could realistically be looking at a construction decision under existing policy in three years, and I don't think there's a lot of other copper projects that have that opportunity, or they have such long build periods because they're so deep underground or because there's so much massive infrastructure or access to
14:02 site. From here — I wish I could show you, but I can literally see our project right from here, right? And there's big 230 kV power lines. There's a road right there, but nobody lives up in the deposit area. So logistically it's very easy to construct. >> Paint that picture. Visiting the project, like from Miami, how do I get there? >> Okay, so if you go from Miami, you would go Miami to Bogotá, right, which is the main hub. Then you would go Bogotá to [a regional airport], which is an airport about 30 minutes away from us,
14:34 which was also nice to see, because they're building new roads, new bridges, bypasses. The design of Colombia was designed a lot around this project in the 1980s. We can arrive here at what we call the Y, because it's the Y of the road where the material comes off the top of the hill on a daily basis.
14:55 I think they told me about 60 boxes of core coming off the hill on a daily basis. And to get from here to the top, right, we could either hike or grab a donkey or grab a helicopter and get to the top. We use all man-portable drills. So that means that literally every single day people are going up and down bringing fuel, rods, core, food, and we have a small camp that's sitting at the top of the hill.
15:23 But you could go from Miami and get to the top of the project in one day. You could easily do it. >> Let's talk about the $31 million in strategic financing. Dundee became a large shareholder. Obviously Frank Giustra is still involved. What did that capital actually unlock? What's the plan for the next 12 to 18 months?
15:45 >> Yeah, it was very serendipitous for a couple reasons. One, that gives us about $45 million in treasury today. I think we have another $14 million of in-the-money warrants expiring over the next year, and our total pathway to get to a construction decision, if we kept everything solely focused on that, is around $50 million.
16:05 So we now have all the money in the bank to ensure that we can get to a construction decision. But more importantly, it allows us to accelerate at the speed that you have a president of Colombia who wants to see things advance quickly. It allows us to make that decision to go from — we have a fourth drill showing up, and we're already looking at mobilizing the fifth drill, right? To make sure that drilling is not the bottleneck of this project.
16:32 So it's about 2 years of runway on a normal basis. If we accelerate a little bit faster, we just pull that point closer in time. And then the last thing is what I mentioned at the beginning: why do I believe that Colombia will be an epicenter of exploration and mining over the next four years? You have the political will, you have the commodity cycle, but you have an endowment that's underexplored.
16:54 It's one of the few places in the world where you can find very, very big deposits near to surface, because it hasn't been picked over. And Mocoa is just on the first 6,000 hectares, and there's still like nine different targets around it we've never tested, but we're sitting on a land package of about 130,000 hectares, right? So a little bit of that money will help looking at the overall district opportunities, the district play that exists at this project.
17:21 >> Let's just talk a little bit more about the PEA. You mentioned doing it in the second half of this year. That's the real test of the story, right? What do you want that study to show people that the resource estimate alone cannot? >> Yeah. So the PEA is the first time you ever wrap the economics.
17:39 It becomes more than just how many pounds of copper are sitting in the ground, to how do you actually take them out, and how does that actually convert into one day becoming copper. It's before the feasibility study. So it's more about the economics, and so there's a couple things that we want to show.
17:58 A, it was important to get a billion tons, because we want to make sure a billion tons are included in the PEA as a mineable resource. It's a weird and funky term at a PEA level, but it's giving you an indication of where we can get with the reserves in the future, right? That it's not just a billion pounds sitting in the ground, but a billion pounds that can come out of the ground.
18:18 That's one, right? But number two, which I think is very special and we look very much forward to helping demonstrate to the market: if you look at a lot of other copper projects, the capital price tag is so big compared to the NPV, right? So the question becomes how do you actually finance something like that? And you hear a lot, you need to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in copper over the next 10 years, and that money doesn't exist right now.
18:42 So securing the financing is a key, key criterion. But because we have a high-grade core sitting near surface, because we have existing infrastructure, it gives us the ability to start at a really big size for getting economies of scale, but then a reasonable amount of capital, and then expand and expand and expand and get to that size that you would want.
19:05 You're not forced to do it from the first day, which makes it much more attractive from a financing perspective, and hits those critical hurdles that the market wants to see in terms of returns. So, yeah. >> Yeah, I still think there's a lot of good news that is going to be coming out, and my favorite part is it's all about moving it towards that line.
19:24 It's about de-risk, de-risk, de-risk, de-risk. $25 million a year or even $50 million sounds like a lot of money, but not when you're talking about the ability to create billions of dollars' worth of value for your shareholders in return for that spend. So it's very easy. It's not what I said at the beginning.
19:42 It's not, oh man, I really hope that we hit a really good drill hole, or the presidency changes. It's about just executing, and I like that, because it's a whole lot more under our control. >> Right. Well said. Look, you've done a tremendous job leading this project, Ian.
19:59 You should be very proud of that. You have happy shareholders. Like I said, 730% in the stock price. I mean, hello. I guess my last question is: how much is it correlated to this boom and interest in copper itself? How correlated is it to the bullishness of the copper story itself? >> So I think you hear this every so often, right: is it a bull yet? But you look, and there's been certain projects that have done very well, but as an average it has
20:37 not. The last time I looked, year to date or over the last year, COPJ is up 20% and copper is up 15%. So you haven't seen that really super leverage yet to the copper price. And going back to what I originally said, I see a lot of value we could create based on today's existing conditions without layering on top.
20:57 I don't think that moment has happened yet where you really see excitement in the marketplace, but it's definitely going to come, right? I have no doubt in my head that that is a day that's going to happen, where you see that euphoria that those that have experienced bull cycles in the metals markets, on the equity side, know how it can be.
21:18 It's still very early, which is also a great message. We're up 700% over the last year, but it's still really early in the story. There's still a long ways to go to get this project to where its valuation should be today. Forget when the world wakes up and figures out that we're running out of copper and it's a really, really big deal.
21:38 >> Running out of copper. I remember you telling me that. Ian Harris, I'll let you get back to your site visit. I know you have a lot of interested investors in the project. Thank you for taking time out of your day to sit with me here on Inside Mining. >> Yeah. And I think one of the messages I'd like to end up with is, absolutely, a lot of people are looking at the copper story again.
21:59 It's structurally different than even the last cycles; it could run a decade, because there's just not enough deposits, because there hasn't been enough investment, and because you have new demand layers that never existed before. So it's worth the time to get up to speed, because I think you'll benefit from that.
22:18 You haven't missed the boat on this one. There's still lots of the story to come. >> A good point, Ian Harris. Continued success. We'll get you back on soon. We've got to touch base. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> And thank you for watching this edition of Inside Mining. We'll have more great CEO interviews coming your way, so stay tuned.