According to the 2016 Technical Report on the Pre-Feasibility Study.
Zafranal represents a classic example of an Andean style porphyry copper, gold, and molybdenum deposit.

Porphyry copper-gold mineralization occurs within a large roughly east-west trending hydrothermally altered zone that is more than 7 kilometres in length and as much as 1.7 kilometres in width in a north-south direction. Copper occurs within veins and stockworks and as disseminations in both the Zafranal Main zone and Victoria deposits. At the Zafranal Main zone deposit, primary (hypogene) mineralization is overlain by zones of secondary enrichment mineralization. Copper mineralization has been categorized, based on copper solubility, into leached, mixed, oxide, supergene and primary zones.

Zafranal Main zone.
Drilling on the Zafranal Main zone has demonstrated continuous mineralization over a strike length of at least 2,500 m, widths of between 500 to 800 m, and over a vertical range of up to 1,000 m. The types of copper mineralization are described as follows:

Leached cap and secondary enrichment

The large altered and mineralized area at Zafranal has a subdued colour anomaly. The deposit has been intensely leached with a well-developed leached cap over the top of the supergene-enriched horizon at depth. Very little hypogene sulfide mineralization is present in outcrop, having been strongly leached and/or altered. At surface all forms of sulfid ........

According to the 2016 Technical Report on the Pre-Feasibility Study.
To assess reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction, it was assumed that the Zafranal deposit would be mined utilizing open pit mining methods under a conceptual scenario of 55,000 tonnes per day production using conventional flotation to produce a concentrate grading 28% copper with credit for gold.

The proposed Zafranal mine will develop two open pits (Zafranal Main and Victoria) with a combined area of 2.47 km2. The final pits will be 2.6 km long and 1.0 km wide and shall reach a maximum depth of 554 m.

Final pit design
The final pit design reflects the decision to employ a stripping contractor for the pre-mine and
early production years (to Year 4), in that the bench height and block size (SMU) were tailored
for the use of medium-sized diesel powered equipment.

Mine design parameters:
- Haul road width - 38-26 m;
- Maximum haul road grade - 10%;
- Bench height - 12 m;
- Nominal minimum mining phase width - 100 m;
- Continuous inter-ramp vertical height - 144 m;
- Safety berm - 25 m.

The road width of 38 m will accommodate the selected 220 t trucks for two-lane traffic. NCL used a maximum 10% road gradient, which is common in the industry for this type of truck. A traffic analysis was carried out on the pit design and for those segments of ramp in the bottom benches of a phase with fewer than 12 tru ........

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