The Nifty deposit is hosted within the folded late-Proterozoic Broadhurst Formation which is part of the Yeneena Group. The Broadhurst Formation is between 1000 m to 2000 m thick and consists of a stacked series of carbonaceous shales, turbiditic sandstones, dolomite and limestone. Structurally, the dominant feature is the Nifty Syncline which strikes approximately southeast-northwest and plunges at about 6-12 degrees to the southeast. The stratabound copper mineralisation occurs as a structurally controlled, chalcopyritequartz dolomite replacement of carbonaceous and dolomitic shale within the folded sequence. The bulk of the primary mineralisation which is currently being mined is largely hosted within the keel and northern limb of the Syncline.

Underground mining is currently carried out using open stoping methods and backfill. This is a bulk mining method where stopes (25m wide, 25 to 50m long and 40 to 60m high) are drilled and blasted and copper ore is loaded and hauled into to an underground crusher and conveying system.

Sulphide ore processing occurs through the 2.8Mtpa processing plant via conventional comminution, grinding and flotation to produce a clean copper concentrate.

The conveying system transports the copper ore to the surface for processing by conventional flotation techniques.

Processing of the sulphide copper ore extracted from underground is by conventional comminution, grinding and flotation, to produce a concentrate that is then filtered and sold as concentrate.

The open pit operation exploited oxide, transitional and chalcocite mineral resources from which copper cathode was recovered via a heap leach and SX-EW method. Open pit mining operations ceased in June 2006 and heap leaching operations ceased in January 2009.