Earlier this week, the company released the prefeasibility study for Carrapateena in South Australia, which outlined a capital costs of $A980 million for an at least 20-year operation to produce 61,000 tonnes of copper and 63,000 ounces of gold per annum.

The PFS for the major project came after the company released the scoping study in February and an optimisation study in May.

The company is aiming to release the feasibility study in early 2017, followed by an investment decision.

Speaking at IMARC, Cole acknowledged it was fast, but OZ wasn’t using conventional project processes.

He said it often took 8-10 years to get a big project to the development stage when value-engineering was applied at every step.

“By the time you go to build it, you’ve usually removed all the optionality,” Cole said.

In designing Carrapateena, OZ has been careful not to sterilise any future resource.

“We’re prepared to take an NPV hit today to provide optionality for the future,” Cole said.

“Future optionality, which NPV isn’t very good at factoring in, is very important for a project like this.”

Importantly, the success of Carrapateena isn’t overly dependent on copper prices.

“It’s a risky proposition if the entire project rests on fundamentals,” Cole said.

“One thing that’s absolutely certain is [the forecasts] are going to be wrong. How wrong, we don’t know.

“If you looked at every downside scenario, in every case, you’d still build the project.”

Cole said OZ was honouring its strategy and wouldn’t be swayed by investors who get nervous in the short-term.

The copper price has risen to around $US2.44 a pound.

“So today’s a fantastic day,” Cole said.

“Two weeks ago the copper price was $2.16 and the sentiment wasn’t quite as positive.”

At the same time, OZ is building up its portfolio through small scale exploration deals with juniors, as well as a larger deal with Cassini Minerals at the West Musgrave.

But don’t expect OZ to acquire junior companies, with Cole describing that as a flawed strategy.

“They actually have skillsets we don’t have. We want to leverage their skillsets.”

Cole said now was the time to build the project pipeline.

“The pipeline still looks fairly immature,” he said.

“But it’s better than where it was a year ago.”

Shares in OZ surged this morning to as high as $8.18, but last traded 8% higher at $7.98.