Revolver Resources (ASX:RRR): Dianne was once Australia’s highest-grade copper mine, now it is in Revolver’s hands

Revolver Resources (ASX:RRR) can boast in a way few other ASX resources juniors can, in having a project that was once Australia’s highest grade mine. The Dianne deposit was mined for 4 years during the late 1970s and early 1980s, generating >20% copper. While low prices and a lack of exploration technology to uncover further resources led to production being halted, Revolver thinks it can do what Bellevue Gold did with its own namesake project.

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Revolver Resources’ (ASX:RRR) Dianne project is unique

The Dianne Copper Mine is located in Cape York Peninsula in Queensland, approximately 160 kilometres northwest of Cairns (240km via the most direct road distance) and 100 km southwest of Cooktown in the state’s Hodgkinson Province. Dianne produced around 64,000 tonnes of high-grade copper ore with an average grade of 22.7% copper from open cut and underground operations.

Since mining stopped it had been owned by a number of companies that could not uncover its full potential but Revolver reckons it can. The key giveaway was that Dianne had never been drilled below 165m. And given the copper ore left behind was so rich, management was confident modern techniques could find it. Unlike in the 1980s, commodity prices are not a problem with the demand for copper, but more on that shortly.

Highly valuable even if it had a short life

Dianne’s resource was last updated in November 2025 to 1.31 million tonnes @ 1.38% Cu, 0.52% Zn and 3.82 g/t Ag, containing 18,000 tonnes of copper, 6,800 tonnes of zinc and 161,000 ounces of silver. A January 2026 study envisioned a re-start and found that even a 4-year operation could be valuable – estimating an NPV of $69m on a 10% discount rate and an IRR of 35%, based on a copper price of US$10,500/tonne – a big discount to current prices of >$12,500/t.

Our friends at Pitt Street Research, in a report published this morning, valued the project at $111.7m in our base case and $171.2m in our optimistic (or bull) case, amounting to $0.38 and $0.58 per share respectively.

The high-grade nature means the plan is to not just produce any copper, but grade-A copper cathode using heap leach and SX-EW (solvent extraction-electrowinning). This is amongst the most purified copper that exists. Even though the term SX-EW below may sound complicated to the layperson, it requires simpler infrastructure meaning lower initial capex.

It involves two steps. The first ‘solvent extraction’ involves setting the material up to pass an electric current between an anode and a cathode. The second step is undertaking the aforementioned process by pumping the solution into electrowinning cells where the copper is plated as a high-purity cathode.

Fasten your seatbelts

The planned tonnage sold 14,330/t may not sound like much copper to investors but remember that this is not raw copper ore but copper cathode – high-grade refined copper metal ready for industrial use.

Nonetheless, the company believes the project could support an even longer and larger operation. There is potential for further discoveries near the mine, with the district prospective for VMS-style base metal mineralisation and Intrusion-Related Gold Systems (IRGSs). Revolver believes the district-scale potential spreads across the 550km2 project area and there will be follow-up drilling in 2026 related to targets that have been identified from electromagnetic and gravity surveys, combined with regional drilling and extensive soil sampling, all completed by Revolver in recent years. The model remains open and untested at depth – which is to say Revolver does not know where the mineralisation ends.

Revolver also has the Osprey project which lies 220km north of Mt Isa. This is an earlier-stage project that the company reckons could deliver the goods. The company has identified 35 drill targets and aims to test these in the coming months, subject to securing funding.

A good time to be in copper

Copper is already in a bull market with LME prices having roughly doubled since 2021-22 when they were US$6,000-7,000/t to ~$13,000/t today. In our view, the price momentum over the last 4 years, could repeat over the next 4.

Copper is already an important industrial mineral in existing technologies such as in combustion vehicles, refrigerators, computers and lighting. Even if they are only one of several metals, or if a low amount in each individual appliance is needed, copper is still important. But next generation technologies require even more copper such as EVs, wind turbines, data centres and grid infrastructure.

For instance, EVs use 2.5-3.5 times more copper than combustion vehicles and copper accounts for up to 6% of a data centre’s capex . There is also potential for copper to replace other common materials where copper could be more efficient such as aluminium, plastics or fibre optics. At the same time, supply is not keeping up given the lack of new discoveries (especially high-volume discoveries) as well as operational problems at existing mines (short-term disruptions and longer-term declines in production).

The ‘Copper Crunch’ is good for Revolver and its projects

In this context, Dianne and Osprey would both be appetising for the copper market. Even just selling just over 14,000/t of copper cathode (the purest copper there is) in 4 years, the Restart Assessment found a >$200m revenue opportunity. It also found capex of ~$21.7m, including contingency. So, for mining financiers, it would be more appealing to look at funding a project like Dianne vs a higher-volume but lower-grade project that may cost hundreds of millions of dollars and several years to bring online.

In either case, it is our firm view that a copper mine coming online in the 2030s could be ideally timed, with the demand-supply gap even higher than today where it is in the hundreds of thousands of tonnes.

Even if the gap will continue to grow across the 2030s, it will be meaningful enough by the early 2030s that copper buyers will be looking for alternatives. JP Morgan estimates that the deficit will be 2 million tonnes by 2030 and up to 8 million tonnes by 2035 .

If those figures are the deficits for all grades of copper, that would be enough of a case for any copper mine to attract financing. But as we noted earlier, Revolver’s Dianne Project stands out given its history as being such a high-grade mine, its low projected capex, lack of geopolitical and regulatory risk being in Queensland and high-grade copper cathode.

Indeed, Revolver has told investors it has already engaged in offtake and financing discussions, including a memorandum of understanding with a group interested in copper cathode offtake and funding support, which highlights that industry partners see value in early-stage production potential from Dianne.

Conclusion

Revolver Resources may be a few years from production but it is timing its run perfectly, at a time a major bull market for copper is just getting started. And it has a project that was once Australia’s highest-grade copper mine that would have continued for longer had market conditions been better and modern technologies existed.

While the past cannot be changed, Dianne is set for a strong future and this will be of benefit to Revolver Resources and its investors.