A billion-tonne Mocoa copper deposit gets its first real balance sheet
Mocoa is large and it starts at surface. Copper Giant reports 1.12 billion tonnes of inferred resources grading 0.51% copper equivalent, or 0.31% copper and 0.039% molybdenum, containing roughly 7.6 billion pounds of copper and about 450,000 tonnes of moly. The estimate was completed by APEX Geoscience with an effective date of Nov. 18, 2025, and the technical report was filed in January.
Inside that footprint, the company identifies about 190 million tonnes grading 0.94% copper equivalent as a potential starter zone, with mineralization from surface and what it describes as clean metallurgy. That is the part a preliminary economic assessment can build a case around, and it is why a trading house can commit to volumes years before a mine exists.
One note on the arithmetic that works in the company’s favour. The copper equivalent grade is calculated using $4.00 a pound copper. Copper is currently trading well above that, which makes the disclosed figure conservative on the copper side.
The offtake agreement, dated Aug. 5, gives Trafigura the right and the obligation to purchase 20% of the copper concentrate and 20% of the molybdenum concentrate produced at Mocoa. It runs for 10 years from the start of commercial production, on arm’s-length market terms. If minimum volumes are not delivered over the period, Trafigura may elect to extend.
That last clause is the tell. This is a firm commitment on both sides rather than an option, and it hands a company that has not yet made a construction decision something most developers never get: a guaranteed route to market.
The molybdenum matters more than it might appear. Beyond hardening steel alloys, moly sits on China’s export control list alongside tungsten, tellurium, bismuth and indium, which puts a Western-hemisphere source in the critical minerals conversation rather than the byproduct column.
“Colombia has the geological conditions and the opportunity to become an important copper producer,” said Edmundo Vidal, Trafigura’s director for Latin America, citing “the country’s recognition of copper as a strategic mineral.”
Trafigura is employee-owned, operates in more than 150 countries, and already has a financing relationship with Denarius through a prepayment facility on the Zancudo project.
