Bougainville Copper Ltd, which used to operate the Panguna mine in the autonomous Papua New Guinea region, has laid out a plan to shareholders for a possible re-opening.
Bougainville's Panguna Copper mine Photo: Supplied
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BCL and the Panguna mine were at the centre of the region's 10 year civil war.
The company, now a majority controlled PNG company after last year's pullout by Rio Tinto, says it was now a different organisation that had learned from the past.
It had laid out a time line, detailing preliminary goals for the next four years.
The hope is to reach these by 2020 and chief executive Mark Hitchcock said then they can focus on starting up again.
"We will be at a stage where we have done a feasibility and that we are ready to go and finance and start building the mine in 2020."
"So then it will be the middle 2020s - a good five years to build and get the mine up and running," he said.