Name of the Project
Haib copper project.

Location
Partially in the Namaqua-Natal province, in Namibia, called the Richtersveld geological subprovince.

Project Owner/s
Mineral explorer and developer Deep-South Resources, through its subsidiary Haib Minerals.

Project Description
An updated preliminary economic assessment (PEA) has shown the Haib project to be amenable to bioheap-leaching.

The PEA envisages a life-of-mine of 24 years and a throughput of 20-million tonnes a year, with copper recovery estimated at 80%, and production estimated at 35 332 t/y of copper cathode and 51 081 t/y of copper sulphate.

The mine design is based on openpit methods. As the deposit comprises hard-rock material, the mining operations will involve the drill and blast of all excavated material, which will be segregated by cutoff grade.

The mining fleet will consist of appropriately sized hydraulic excavators and off-highway dump trucks, supported by standard opencut drilling and auxiliary equipment.

There will not be any tailings. The spent heaps will be rehabilitated and left in place. Owing to environmental reasons and water resources, the tailings from the pH adjustment process and the iron removal process will be disposed onto the spent heaps using filtered dry-stacked tailings.

Potential Job Creation
Not stated.

Net Present Value/Internal Rate of Return
The project has a pretax net present value, at a discount 7.5% rate, of $977-million, and an internal rate of return 30.1%, with a payback of 4.22 years.

Capital Expenditure
Capital expenditure is estimated at $341-million.

Planned Start/End Date
Not stated.

Latest Developments
Deep-South Resources has reappointed South African technical consultancy the MSA Group to produce an updated NI 43-101-compliant mineral resource estimate for the Haib copper project.

The mandate of MSA includes site visits to verify data collection, quality assurance and controls, the development of a structural geological model in collaboration with Deep-South’s geological team, the assessment of the presence of domains and modelling them in three dimensions, completing a geostatistical study for every domain and issuing an updated NI 43-101 mineral resource estimate.

The mandate of MSA was previously interrupted when the Namibia Ministry of Mines refused to approve the renewal of the Haib copper licence in 2021. However, after a long court battle, the Ministry renewed the licence in early 2023.

The new mineral resource estimate and subsequent technical report will follow the completion of a drilling programme that was stopped in June 2021. There are still

5 200 m of drilling to be completed.

MSA has started reviewing the historical drilling data to specify the additional drilling needed to produce the mineral resource estimate.

Key Contracts, Suppliers and Consultants
METS Engineering Group (updated PEA); Knight Piésold Consulting (scoping studies and assessments); Csiro (conduct bio-assisted heap-leaching column testwork); METS Engineering Group of Australia (testwork supervision); and MSA Group (NI 43-101-compliant mineral resource estimate).

Contact Details for Project Information
Deep-South Resources (Namibia), tel +264 61 435 8267 or email info@deepsouthresources.com.