Modern Mining July 2018

COUNTRY FOCUS: BOTSWANA

Kalahari Copperbelt about to realise its full potential

A drill site at the T3 (Motheo) project. The ‘discovery’ hole in 2016 intersected 52 m at 2,0 % copper (Cu) and 32 g/t silver (Ag) from shallow depth (photo: MOD Resources).

scoping study level within three years, and an option to consolidate the remaining exploration assets three years after completion. The T3 project is operated by the current JV’s in-country subsidiary, Tshukudu Metals Botswana. This will become wholly owned by MOD once the agreement referred to above is completed with the JV exploration assets outside the T3 project being transferred to a new JV company to be known as Tshukudu Exploration. Progress on T3 has been rapid and it is now in the Feasibility Study (FS) stage, little more than two years after the initial discovery in March 2016, when an RC drill hole intersected 52 m at 2,0 % copper (Cu) and 32 g/t silver (Ag) from shallow depth. There are currently between eight and ten drill rigs deployed on the Tshukudu tenements at any one time and, to speed up results, a sam- ple preparation facility was commissioned in March this year in the town of Ghanzi, remov- ing the requirement to export large volumes of drill core to Johannesburg for analysis. The facility has recently been processing over 100 samples per day. In January this year, MOD announced the highly positive results of a Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS) on T3 outlining the potential for a

After a false start with the Boseto open-pit mine of Discovery Metals, Botswana’s Kalahari Copperbelt – a ‘corridor’ of sediment-hosted copper/silver mineralisation extending south-west fromMaun in Botswana through to the Namibian border and beyond – is on the brink of realising its early promise. Twomines – the T3 (Motheo) project of Tshukudu Metals Botswana and the Zone 5 project of Khoemacau Copper Mining – are on the immediate horizon and first production fromboth could be achieved by 2020.

T he T3 project currently represents a joint venture (JV) between ASX- listed MOD Resources (70 %) and AIM-listed Metal Tiger (30 %) al- though the two companies have just announced an agreement which will see MOD acquiring Metal Tiger’s 30 % interest in T3, a move which is expected to streamline de- cision-making and enable accelerated financ- ing and development of the project. The two companies will continue to collabo- rate on the current JV’s exploration assets in the Kalahari Copperbelt which fall outside the T3 project although, as part of the agreement, MOD is provided with options to acquire Metal Tiger’s interests in any new discoveries that reach the

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34  MODERN MINING  July 2018