A mine that has already closed once is an unlikely place to find one of the more interesting copper stories of the year. Yet in central Yukon, a former copper, gold and silver producer called Minto is being brought back to life by a company controlled by the First Nation whose land surrounds it. That company released a fresh batch of drilling results today, and several stand out.
The company is Selkirk Copper Mines Inc. (OTCQX: SKRKF, TSXV: SCMI). The Selkirk First Nation, a self-governing community based in Pelly Crossing, indirectly holds a controlling stake. Selkirk Copper controls 26,850 hectares of mineral claims plus the old mine’s processing plant, which can handle 4,100 tonnes of rock a day, and a 400-person camp. Having that equipment already in place spares the company one of the biggest costs of building a mine.
Drill results can read like a wall of numbers, so a quick translation helps. Copper is reported as a percentage of the rock, while gold and silver are reported in grams per tonne, written as g/t. Companies often roll all three metals into one figure called copper equivalent, or CuEq, which expresses their combined value as if it were all copper. The two things that matter most are grade, meaning how rich the rock is, and width, meaning how much of it there is.
The standout came from hole 26SCM237 at Minto North, one of the company’s priority mining areas. It returned 44.7 metres averaging 2.12% copper, 1.16 g/t gold and 10.7 g/t silver, or 3.0% CuEq. Inside that stretch were two richer sections of 11.1 metres at 5.83% CuEq and 9.2 metres at 6.45% CuEq. The overall figure is a blend that also includes a band of barren rock, which the company says was unusual compared with its 45 earlier holes in this area. Even so, Selkirk Copper ranks it among the best combinations of grade and width it has drilled.
Two nearby holes backed it up. Hole 26SCM228 returned 12.7 metres at 4.55% CuEq, and hole 26SCM239 returned 5.1 metres at 5.58% CuEq. The company believes a north-northwest geological structure concentrates the richest copper here and plans to use that idea to guide drilling elsewhere.
At Copper Keel, hole 26SCM242 tested a 90-metre gap between earlier holes and returned 12.4 metres at 2.41% CuEq, better than expected. Drilling there also outlined a new lens sitting between 50 and 70 metres below surface, which is shallow by mining standards. At Area 118, hole 26SCM236 stepped 50 metres beyond earlier drilling and returned 8.7 metres at 3.38% CuEq, with the trend still open to the north.
The metal itself has had a strong year. Copper traded at roughly $6.53 a pound today, about 32% higher than a year ago. It has slipped for three straight sessions after hotter-than-expected U.S. inflation data, but it hit a record high last month. Selkirk Copper calculates its copper equivalent figures using $4.60 a pound, well below current levels.
As of yesterday, crews had drilled 54,711 metres in 223 holes this season, or 109% of the plan, and drilling should wrap up in the next week. Only 67 of those holes have reported results so far, and lab turnaround is about eight weeks, so more numbers are due through the fall and winter. The current resource estimate already holds about 940 million pounds of copper in its higher-confidence categories.
President and CEO M. Colin Joudrie said the drills “continue to deliver high-grade copper-gold-silver intercepts across several mineralized zones.” The data will feed an updated resource estimate in the first quarter of 2027 and a Feasibility Study, the detailed engineering and cost review that usually comes before a restart decision.
Minto has already proven it can produce copper, so the real question is whether the rock left in the ground can support a profitable second life. Results like these strengthen that case, but they are early evidence rather than a verdict. The Feasibility Study will show how much of today’s promise holds up once every cost is counted.
