Cobre, the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) listed exploration growth company with prospective projects in Botswana, announced on Thursday that the country’s department of mines has renewed the five exploration licenses for an additional two years, making the exploring company buoyant that it will strike fortunes.
The renewal of the licenses held through Triprop Holdings are subject to a binding earn-in agreement with Kalahari Metals Limited – the major shareholder in Triprop Holdings. Kalahari Metals Limited is a joint venture company between Metal Tiger, which holds a 50.01 percent interest while Cobre holds the remainder of the shareholding.
Cobre has already been exploring approximately 8,100 km2 of tenements within the prolific Kalahari Copper Belt, one of the most prospective areas in the world for copper exploration, which the company hopes its enriched, high-grade copper discoveries and high-grade development pipeline will underpin copper’s future growth in the electric vehicle and renewable energy sectors.
“The renewal of these exploration licenses has come at a significant time for the company as we commence an aggressive exploration program in Botswana,” Cobre executive chairman and managing director Martin Holland said.
“The renewal cements the belt-scale opportunity provided by our extensive land package in the Kalahari Copper Belt, and will support an additional exploration pipeline of targets for future drill testing.
He disclosed that the efficiencies shown during the renewal process once again reinforced Botswana as a Tier 1 friendly mining jurisdiction and a country that is a pleasure doing business in.
Earlier in August, Cobre raised A$7 million (P61.7 million) through share placement to investors in order to fund exploration work in Botswana. The share placement was undertaken in two tranches with the first tranche, consisting of more than 20.3-million shares, placed under the company’s existing placement capacity.
Under the second tranche of the placement, Cobre issued a further 9.8-million shares to its largest shareholder Metal Tiger, which will be subject to shareholder approval at a meeting scheduled for later this year. Metal Tiger, which invests in natural resource opportunities, will hold 44,572,172 ordinary shares in Cobre representing approximately 21 percent of Cobre’s issued share capital.
The company said the funds raised will be used to fast-track exploration on the tenement package held by Kalahari Metals, where Cobre recently signed a share purchase deed to acquire the remaining 49 percent of the company, which it does not already own, subject to shareholder approval.
“The Cobre team is pleased to have secured funds required to continue to rapidly progress exploration on the Kalahari Metals tenement package in the Kalahari Copper Belt, following on from the successful results of the first three diamond drilling holes,” said Cobre MD and executive chairperson Martin Holland.
“The footprint of mineralization, which now extends over more than 3 km, is very much in line with known deposits in the Kalahari Copper Belt.”
Besides the exploration work in the Kalahari Copper Belt, Cobre has doubled down on the Ngami Copper Project (NCP) and Kitlanya West licenses in Botswana with an infill diamond drilling campaign — designed to define a new copper deposit at Ngami – and a soil sampling program over Kitlanya, which will investigate the regional opportunities of the Kalahari Copper Belt.
“This is a very exciting period for Cobre and all our shareholders. We are very proud of this new potential copper discovery, which was masterfully engineered by the Cobre technical team,” Holland said.
“The targeted strike length at NCP is comparable to some of the largest copper deposits in the Kalahari Copper Belt. The company will now focus on aggressively infilling the new potential copper discovery throughout the remainder of this year. This is a significant opportunity now for the Cobre team to unlock a new deposit and a new copper district.”
Cobre’s share price has soared by more than 660 percent since announcing a significant new copper discovery late July at the Ngami project. With the current share price of 0.41 cents, the company has market capitalization of A$70.7 million (P622.9 million).
