DAVAO CITY—The exploration conducted by the lone South Korean-backed mining firm in Sultan Kudarat confirmed the government’s mineral mapping that the Daguma mountain range is indeed rich in copper and gold deposits.

“In fact, the mapping would point out that the Daguma Range is as rich in copper and gold minerals as the Diwata Range of Compostela Valley and Surigao del Sur,” said Rudolf Joseph Lopez, operations manager of the Fadicasu Mining Corp. & General Resources Co. Ltd. (FMC & GRCO).

The “free gold,” or the gold that could be derived directly from panning in the rivers in many gold rush areas, was valued at 22 karats, “showing how rich the mountains of these minerals could be,” he told reporters at the sideline of the Mindanao Mining Consultative Forum held September 18 and 19 at the Waterfront Insular Hotel here.

The company has already dug 10 holes with a combined depth of 600 meters, and the initial findings show a “copperous gold.” “As a rule of thumb, if there is copper, there is gold, but what our diggings would like to find out is the volume of gold and copper in the area, and the grade of copperous gold.”

“This is important to allow us to determine the kind of processing that we do, the volume of chemicals that we need to separate copper from gold,” he said.

The exploration was being done in barangay Kinayao, Bagumbayan town in Sultan Kudarat, a province to the southwest of Davao City. The area is in the eastern part of the Daguma Range in the central part of the province.

The range also holds coal, with a sizeable deposit found in scenic Lake Sebu and chromite in Lebak in the west.

There were about 11 holders of the mineral-production sharing agreement (MPSA) in the range and a total of 50 firms in the entire province.

Constancio Paye, director of the Central Mindanao office of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB), said that the FMC & GRCO was the only foreign-backed MPSA holder so far.

The MPSA of the local company Fadicasu Mining Corp.— representing the family names of the partners Faderal, Dida, Caspe and Subere—started operating in 1998 and tied up with the South Korean company GRCO last year.

The company would invest P100 million to explore 4,500 hectares covering five barangays, and would drill an initial of 2,000 meters depth within two years “to give us an idea of the deposits.” It started the drillings in July last year, and was expected to reach that depth in December this year.

Lopez said the company would ship copper concentrate to South Korea.

It was also set to build a processing plant.

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