Noronex chief geologist Bruce Hooper believes the Kalahari Copper belt will be a significant copper producer over the coming decades.
He has spent a large portion of his mineral exploration career looking for large copper deposits all over the world, including over 25 years ago in the outcropping portion of this belt in Namibia.
He is now following this out east to Botswana undercover.
The belt has now come to fruition as a serious copper producer, with Cupric Canyon’s Zone 5 underground mine producing 60,00 tonnes of copper annually and looking to expand this to 130,000 tonnes,” Mr Hooper said.
“Meanwhile, Sandfire is just a few weeks off commissioning its Motheo deposit which will begin at 35,000 tonnes of copper, ramping up to 55,000 tonnes annually.
“So now, a belt that historically hasn’t been looked at in great detail is of global importance.”
Noronex is systematically exploring its tenements along 300 kilometres of barely touched strike that shows a geological similarity with the 168 million tonnes at 2.1 per cent copper Zone 5 deposit.
This is where Mr Hooper’s detailed knowledge of the area shines.
“There has been a great deal of work to understand the behaviour of copper in the Kalahari region,” Mr Hooper explains.
“Mineralised fluid moves from the basin centre onto the basement margins where they precipitate enriched mineralisation into the first reductant units in the overlying sedimentary rocks.”
In a world fraught with geopolitical tensions, Namibia, with its strong pro-mining tradition, offers a stable government and a favourable investment climate.
This will be extremely helpful to Noronex with its ambitions to strike critical mass with the country offering good infrastructure and relatively straightforward and transparent mining and licensing processes.
“We’ve got a pipeline of exciting targets to drill test undercover in Namibia, which is a fantastic place to develop new mines with its low population density and good mining culture,” Mr Hooper said.
THE DISCOVERY THAT STARTED IT ALL
It’s impressive when you consider that 120 years after modern exploration started in Zambia and the central African copper belt, Ivanhoe Mines found the largest deposit known at Kamoa-Kakula in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Kamoa is expected to become one of the biggest copper producers in the world over the next five to 10 years, competing with BHP’s Escondida mine in Chile, with high-grade mineralisation close to the surface and hiding under shallow cover right next to the major central African copper belt.
“Kamoa-Kakula is changing our understanding of all of the sedimentary copper belts around the world regarding the potential size and nature of this type of deposit.” Mr Hooper said.
“Part of Noronex’s area in Namibia has never had exploration – there have never been any drill holes, and that’s strikingly similar to where Kamoa was 12 years ago.”