Taseko Mines (TSX/NYSE-A/LSE: TKO) hosted a launch event on Tuesday, October 6, to mark the onset of commercial production at Florence Copper in Florence, Arizona. The operation is the first new greenfield source of US copper cathode production since 2008, and the world’s first commercial-scale in-situ copper recovery project, in which a solution is circulated through the orebody underground and copper is plated into LME Grade A cathode sheets on the surface, with no open pit, no waste rock piles and no conventional tailings.
The numbers matter. Florence is ramping toward nameplate capacity of 85 million pounds of refined copper cathode a year and is expected to produce at least 1.5 billion pounds over a 22-year mine life, according to the project profile. For 2026, Taseko is targeting 30 to 35 million pounds of Florence cathode. The operation is expected to support about 800 jobs in Arizona. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin attended the launch, alongside federal, state and local officials, a signal of the project’s place in Washington’s critical-minerals agenda.
The timing is not accidental. LME copper is trading near all-time highs around $14,600 a tonne, the Trump administration is weighing potential tariffs on refined copper that have already pulled inventories into US warehouses and tightened ex-US availability, and domestic buyers face record premiums for non-Chinese cathode. Florence lands into the strongest US copper pricing in history for a greenfield project.
Taseko’s same release raised 2026 guidance for its Gibraltar mine in British Columbia to 115 to 120 million pounds of copper, from 110 to 115 million pounds, on production through three quarters totaling 41 million pounds of combined Gibraltar and Florence output in Q3. Gibraltar remains the company’s cash engine while Florence ramps. The project reached this point after roughly 13 years of test work and environmental permitting, a timeline that says as much about US mine permitting as it does about the technology.