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ReGIonAL RoUnDUP
Cobre
starts trail
in the
Kalahari
he largest and most prospective cop-
Tper ground holdings in Sub Saharan Metal Tiger had a 62.17% equity interest in KML prior to Cobre’s proposed scrip-based
Africa were set for the hands of Australian acquisition for the latter. An EGM in February is scheduled for Cobre shareholders to
companies at the time of print. approve the transaction, which will see Metal Tiger hold a 49% direct interest in the new
Sandfire Resources Ltd’s acquisition Cobre Kalahari Pty Ltd vehicle, while also holding a 20.72% stake in Cobre
of Mod back in 2019 not only gave the
copper producer claims on the advanced
T3 project but also a “dominant landhold- McNeilly told Paydirt. transaction announced [December 15],
ing on the underexplored Kalahari cop- Metal Tiger holds a 2% NSR over Cobre Ltd,” McNeilly said.
per belt in Botswana”. ground held by Tshukudu Exploration It has been a busy first 12 months
Following in the footsteps of Sandfire (Sandfire’s subsidiary in Botswana and on the ASX for Cobre after it listed on
is Cobre Ltd, which had scheduled an Namibia which has an exploration port- the back of the Perrinvale VHMS cop-
EGM for approval of a share purchase folio spanning 26,650sq km in the Kala- per-gold project, 260km north-west of
agreement to acquire up to 51% of UK’s hari), while it also holds about 3.5% Kalgoorlie, and an earn-in arrangement
Kalahari Metals Ltd (KML). shareholding in Sandfire. in the Sandiman base metals play in the
The transaction will see Cobre Kala- Cobre Kalahari will become the man- Upper Gascoyne Shire, also in Western
hari Pty Ltd forge ahead in the Kalahari ager of the JV with Metal Tiger upon Australia.
copper belt in JV with Metal Tiger plc. completion of the transaction. Holland said an update on the
“It will be a 51:49 JV between Cobre Under the Metal Tiger/KML partner- Scwhabe project optimisation study at
and Metal Tiger and we’re both commit- ship, first phase diamond drilling focused Perrinvale was imminent.
ted to spend a total of $1.75 million each on delineating stratigraphic markers for “We’re looking at monetisation options
on exploration on quite a large defined copper mineralisation at Kitlanya East on that deposit and in terms of monetisa-
target adjacent to T3 and A4 owned by (KIT-E project). tion we’re looking if the economics stack
Sandfire,” Cobre executive chairman A total of five diamond holes for 1,709m up for a small open pit start-up operation,
Martin Holland told Paydirt. have been completed, in addition to fur- which could generate significant cash
“There are a lot of works and scouting ther soil geochemical sampling at KIT-E. flow for the company in the near-term
holes and deep stratigraphic holes plus a Sandfire’s T3 deposit is 5km from the especially with strong copper and gold
lot of geochem work that has been com- northern licence of the KIT-E project and prices,” Holland said.
pleted by Metal Tiger and KML over the the work carried out so far has been fo- “Having a high-grade VMS system,
last 2-3 years for us to now be able to cused on prospective geological settings even though it is small in size, can be
move ahead and advance exploration on analogous to T3 and A4. quite lucrative. We’ll update optimisation
that target. That will happen in Q1 of this Follow-up drilling at KIT-E is planned, on the deposit plus an internal scoping
year.” with McNeilly excited by the compilation study followed by the next stages of po-
With access to 8,100sq km of tene- of data indicating potentially rich copper- tentially turning that into an operation.
ments in the Kalahari copper belt in Bot- silver mineralisation. “Sandfire has spent tens of millions of
swana, KML has assembled the second “…with the integration of analysis of the dollars trying to find another deposit out-
largest land package in the area outside stratigraphic drilling interpretation, repro- side of DeGrussa with not a lot of luck.
of Sandfire’s holding. cessed airborne geophysics and soil Even though we have a lot of targets
“For people that want to play Botswana sampling data, identified multiple strati- around Perrinvale from a regional per-
and early-stage exploration there is Co- graphic dome targets that we consider spective, we are aiming to use the free
bre or us that can give them good expo- highly prospective for hosting copper– cash flow from Schwabe to explore fur-
sure and given where copper is heading, silver mineralisation. Given its proximity ther regionally at Perrinvale without dilut-
we are a good play. At the end of the day, to the Sandfire T3 development project ing shareholders.”
I am sure we are going to be invested in and A4 resource and prospect, this is of
by people mostly for our Botswana as- significant value to both KML and Metal – Mark Andrews
set,” Metal Tiger chief executive Michael Tiger and subject to completion of the
Page 48 FeBRUaRY 2021 aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT

