New plan to exploit island’s estimates £1bn in copper resources
MOST of the copper of Cyprus has yet to be found, with an exploration company set up on the island to search for the metal.
Aristides Anagnostaras-Adams, Managing Director of Eastern Mediterranean Resources Public Limited (EMED), told the Cyprus Mail that the company started field programmes back in January and identified 50 areas on the island worth considering for further work.
“We then focused on a few areas that deserved to be drill tested in Pano Koutrafas, Kato Moni and North Alestos. We found some copper at the latter site which deserves a lot more work,” he said.
The 50-year-old Greek Australian, who is the former deputy chairman of the Australian Gold Council, left Sydney a year ago to set up the company’s corporate headquarters in Nicosia.
He explained that the geology of Cyprus and the surrounding area “presents a good opportunity” as the techniques applied over the past 30 years in other parts of the world have yet to be applied in Cyprus.
“All the copper that has been mined here so far was found due to the copper mineralisation on the surface. None that is hidden from the surface has been found and our aim is to find it. Mother nature doesn’t deliver everything to the surface where we can see it; she hides it.”
He added that the biggest copper mine of old was located at Mavrovouni, on Morphou Bay, which ceased operations when Turkey invaded in 1974. Finding economic deposits of copper will create a lot of wealth.
“If we could find the hidden twin of Mavrovouni, it would be 100 metres long, 400m wide and 150m deep and would contain £1 billion worth of metal content. Approximately 80 to 90 per cent of the revenue generated would be dispersed within Cyprus and a lot of jobs would also be created.”
Anagnostaras-Adams explained that EMED was established by people with international experience in many countries in the mining industry. The company’s long-term objective is to trigger the development of modern mining operations in Eastern Europe, using modern techniques, in a way that is socially and environmentally responsible.
“In our opinion, there’s a misapprehension in most of Europe that modern mining is too risky for the community, with not enough rewards,” the MD said.
“Historically, there have been some bad practices which have left behind damaged areas. I would like to stress that when people see how we go about our work, any objections that they may have will disappear.
“From day one, we’ve had an environmental officer as part of our team, who have won the National Environment Award in Australia for their work in mining under a town next to a World Heritage Site.
“We have brought our expertise and team from Australia, which is the number one mining country in the world. Around our team, we’ve put into place 20 mining experts from in and around Cyprus, who are integrating practical experiences from Australia with local knowledge and expertise.”
He also spoke of the necessity for mining, saying that the world needs it, “unless everybody’s prepared to walk around naked and live in caves”. Anagnostaras-Adams said that 90 per cent of electricity stems from mined energy sources and that we’d have no metal otherwise.
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