Friday morning saw Kavango Resources release its interim results, detailing operational progress across its portfolio of projects in Botswana throughout the first six months of 2022.
Author: Alex Chalk
Among the highlights of the period was the conclusion of a 3,300m “Proof of Concept” drill campaign at the company’s flagship Kalahari Suture Zone. Likewise, H1 2022 also saw the firm complete drilling at its Ditau project along with mapping and sampling across five Kalahari Copper Belt prospecting licences.
What is likely to be of particular interest to investors is Kavango’s inclusion of its net current assets, which sit at $1.61m split between cash, cash equivalents, and trade receivables. After all, as chairman David Smith highlights, this financing will contribute to important work across the company’s portfolio through the rest of the year and beyond:
“Kavango’s team now has a comprehensive range of skills, spanning geophysics, mineral exploration, legal, and financing, meaning that, in combination with our Botswana country manager Tipps Ngwisanyi and our on the ground exploration team, Kavango is set up to deliver exploration success. We look forward to providing further updates in the near future.”
Among the most anticipated of Kavango’s upcoming workstreams is its planned drilling in the Kalahari Copper Belt, or “KCB”.
Here, geological mapping first identified “Ngwako Pan-D’Kar” formational contact across multiple locations. These conductive zones are known to relate closely to copper/silver mineralisation at a number of locations across the wider KCB.
To follow up, Kavango has completed widespread soil sampling to see if it can identify near-surface mineralisation that matches up with these conductive areas. In doing so, it has produced a series of high-priority targets on all of the licences sampled so far.
This includes four significant geochemical features consisting of more than 15 parts per million copper on licence PL036/2020, two large zones of anomalous copper with strike lengths of 8km and 27km on licence PL082/2018, and a 5km long by 3.5km wide area of anomalous copper at its Mamuno licences.
Kavango is currently optimising these targets by combining geochemical data, geological mapping, previous airborne electromagnetic data, and additional geophysical surveys. This will give it the greatest chance of success when it comes to drill testing them later in the year.
With Smith highlighting Kavango’s belief that the KCB licences represent its earliest chance of a discovery, investors will be keeping a keen eye on progress here.
They will also be looking out for the firm’s next steps at its Kalahari Suture Zone, or “KSZ”, project where it is exploring for Norilsk-style nickel-copper-PGE mineralisation.
Kavango is currently completing further geophysical surveys to provide comprehensive coverage over the “B Target Area” it drilled on its Great Red Spot target area in the KSZ earlier this year.
It has already identified three conductors here, two of which (B3 and B4) exhibit promising conductivity of 4,350 Siemens, while a third (B1) boasts conductivity of 14,350 Siemens.
For context, Kavango’s criteria states that any conductor target that lies in the correct geological setting and exhibits a conductivity of more than 1,000 Siemens is a drill target for massive sulphides. Meanwhile, those with a conductivity of greater than 3,000 Siemens represent priority drill targets and those with more than 10,000 Siemens are high priority targets.
The company will now complete additional CSAMT, TDEM and downhole EM surveys to learn more about these conductors as well as other prospective areas of the KSZ.
Elsewhere at the Great Red Spot, Kavango is also completing work to follow up on the potential discovery of a deeper, Iron Oxide-Copper-Gold deposit that would conceptually be similar to Olympic Dam sulphide deposits.
Finally, Kavango is also planning to follow-up on specific targets at its Ditau project near to the KSZ. Drilling results here recently highlighted the anomalous presence of copper and gold, the latter of which has never before been identified in the area.
Petrology samples are pending and will be used to help define a geological model for the area, as well as guide future work. According to Kavango, this is likely to require further drilling to evaluate the size and scale of the system and establish whether the system may intensify proximal to a deep source.
Author: Alex Chalk
Disclaimer: The author has been paid for the production of this piece by the company or companies mentioned above.
