GABORONE, Botswana (miningweekly) – An offer of compromise has been tabled for the acquisition of the provisionally liquidated Boseto copper operation in north-west Botswana.
Botswana’s Khoemacau Copper Mining has submitted the offer to Discovery Copper Botswana and will know whether its offer has been accepted on Friday, when it is put to a vote as part of a provisional liquidation process being conducted by Deloitte Botswana.
Khoemacau has been in dialogue as neighbour and potential acquirer for the last two years, regional manager Johannes Tsimako told the Botswana Resource Sector Conference, which Creamer Media is attending.
Formerly known as Hana Ghanzi Copper, Khoemacau is a subsidiary of Cupric Canyon Capital, which has been exploring the Ghantisi-Chobe copper/silver project, located in the Kalahari copper belt within the Ghantsi and Ngamiland districts.
Discovery Copper sold the first copper/silver concentrate from Boseto in June 2012.
If Khoemacau’s bid is successful, it will complete all the drilling and feasibility work this year and begin underground mine construction in 2016.
The conference heard that the Botswana government was considering taking up a 15% participation in the proposed 3.6-million-ton-a-year underground copper operation.
“It’s not going to be one mine but a number of mines. Zone 5 is done and dusted and we’re now looking at Zone 6 and Zone 9,” Tsimako told the conference.
Grid power is scheduled to be delivered to Botswana’s North West district by the end of 2018.
“The key driver is going to be cheap power,” he emphasised.
Both the grade and the resource are being increased to increase the life-of-mine, currently licensed for 20 years.
Planned are three boxcuts with three spiral systems into the steeply dipping orebody.