Albeit not as high grade or as big as the world-class Sepon copper cathode mine in Laos which shot not only Hegarty but the Mighty Ox (Oxiana) into the limelight - and ultimately resulted in it being taken over by China's MMG and its Prominent Hill asset morphed into OZ Minerals following the merger with Zinifex - the significance of Lady Annie to CST's long-term aspirations, and that of the Mount Isa region, cannot be underestimated.
 
For others, such as CST general manager Australia Barry Deans and Lady Annie general manager Brian Wyatt, who both worked with previous owner CopperCo and its managing director, Brian Rear, it represents the culmination of many years of work and backs up their long-held belief in the field.
 
The wealth of knowledge onsite cannot be under-estimated, with senior management clocking up more than 100 years of collective experience in the copper game, and nearly half of the 271-strong workforce (46%) being previous CopperCo employees.
 
The company also prides itself on its relationship with the traditional owners of the region, the Kalkadoon people, from which it currently employs 14 people.
 
Some employees, like processing manager Roger Boston, actually cut their teeth at Australia's first copper cathode mine at Girilambone in New South Wales with Straits Resources.
 
The story for CST really started to take shape in November last year when it produced first copper cathodes from oxide ore at Lady Annie after acquiring the mothballed project in June of that year from the Tony Sage-backed Cape Lambert Resources for $A135 million.
 
Its vision is to become a 250,000 tonne per annum copper producer by 2015. Importantly, Lady Annie, which is set to reach an ultimate heap leach, solvent extraction electrowinning production rate of 30,000tpa by August, will provide the cash flow CST needs to develop its larger 110,000tpa Mina Justa play in southern Peru, a property Hegarty likens to Prominent Hill in South Australia.
 
This year Lady Annie is set to produce 20,000-25,000t of copper cathode at estimated cash costs of $US1.50-1.60 per pound ($A1.38-1.47/lb), with 15,000t of copper cathode already contracted for sale to MM Kembla.
 
Marketing trials for new sale contracts next year are also underway and plans to obtain a London Metal Exchange registration for its copper are being investigated.
 
"You really need scale in this business and to grow to 250,000 tonnes per annum we will be looking to acquire additional projects in the Asia-Pacific region," Hegarty told journalists on a recent visit to Lady Annie.
 
He has also not ruled out the possibility of a secondary listing in Australia for the Chinese-backed group.
 
Interestingly, only the day after the site visit, Mt Isa's main copper producer Xstrata announced its takeover of copper junior Exco Resources, a group which has been ripe for the picking with acreage in the Cloncurry region and a growing copper inventory.
 
Consolidation, along with growth, is set to be a continuing trend in this part of the world, particularly given Legend Mining's phosphate plans at Paradise and Xstrata's high-grade Lady Loretta zinc play which is sitting in the wings. Both of these deposits neighbour the Lady Annie tenements.
 
With $US500 million in cash, no debt and no hedging, exploration is not something CST intends shying away from. Its planned burn rate of $20-25 million, which will pay for about 155,000 metres of drilling in 2011, represents the biggest spend yet on the Lady Annie tenements.
 
To this end, the exploration team is building up onsite and will total 35 (15 of which are geologists), once three geologists seconded from Zimbabwe on 457 visas arrive shortly.
 
Work has already come up trumps with a 105m sulfide extension to the Mt Clarke West deposit, a new discovery at Ant Hill of 5.6 million tonnes grading 0.76% copper thanks to the scientific prowess of senior exploration geologist Mike Feldman, and early encouragement from Cameron River.
 
CST has already made a mining licence application over the Ant Hill tenements which, based on current resources, already have sufficient ore to sustain a two to three-year mine life, but any development here would be a stand-alone proposition.
 
Deposits within the mine project area include Lady Annie, Mt Clarke West, Mt Clarke East and Flying Horse, while Ant Hill falls within near-mine targets and Cameron River, Investigator and Cloncurry East are classified as more regional plays.
 
With current reserves of 11.2Mt grading 1.1% copper for a contained 123,000t of metal and resources of 65.2Mt at 0.71% for a contained 463,000t, it is the transitional and sulfide material which holds the immediate upside potential as CST works to expand the mine life from the current eight years to beyond 10.
 
The transitional material, which totals 12.67Mt at 0.65% copper for a contained 82,000t of metal, has not yet been included in the reserve calculation, but full-scale testwork on this potential new ore source is already underway and has potential to add three years to the mine life.
 
Testwork has also begun on the potential to bacterial leach the sulfide material, which totals 20.9Mt at 0.69% copper for 145,000t of metal, while a scoping study into development of a 2.5Mtpa concentrator onsite is also progressing.
 
To put into perspective the blue sky potential of CST's tenements, exploration manager Jay Klopper said only six deep holes had been drilled into the sulfides outside the immediate mining area.
 
Quick to put its foot on more ground, a further 1600 square kilometres of tenements are also under application in the region.
 
Current work is focused on converting the measured and indicated oxide and transitional material to reserves and on upgrading inferred numbers to a higher category and potentially reserves.
 
Sulfide opportunities exist at Lady Annie, Mt Kelly, Ant Hill and McLeod Hill, but it has been a 105m section of visible sulfide outside the Mt Clarke West pit wall shell that has whetted the appetite of Klopper, and for which assays are awaited.
 
At Mt Kelly, which has returned hits of 58m at 3.5% copper and 15 grams per tonne gold, a new sulfide resource is expected sometime in July or August, while a new resource for Ant Hill is due any day based on drilling completed to November last year.
 
To help streamline cathode stripping operations, CST has also invested in a robotic stripping machine which is due to be commissioned in July.