So here we are: 2023.
We certainly made a lot of technical progress across our portfolio last year amid difficult macroeconomic conditions. But this is a “show me” market. What it wants to see is metal on the books, and it is our job to deliver this.
So, where do I stand on our prospects for the coming year?
I’m quietly confident.
Don’t get me wrong, the market is still fragile and, with the economy wobbling, I suspect there are still a fair number of challenges to come.
But as I said in my last update during the festive break, where the small cap space is concerned, and specifically where Kavango is concerned…
I think things are looking very positive.
Why?
Well, aside from the strong performance in metal prices, all the technical advances we made in 2022, the physical evidence of our projects’ prospectivity we’ve gathered, the significant finance we’ve raised, the improvements we’ve made across the business, and, of course, the developments we’re seeing in our drill campaign in the Kalahari Copper Belt (“KCB”)…
You may have seen that we closed out last year by making two new appointments to our board.
Building on our corporate and technical experience
It’s a real pleasure to welcome Peter Wynter Bee and Jeremy S. Brett as directors of Kavango.
Jeremy has been working with us for a while now. I recruited him in February 2021, and he has already played a key role in enhancing our exploration programmes. It’s not been easy. Dealing with various legacy issues in Kavango has been hard work, but Jeremy has been steadfast throughout.
Jeremy is highly talented and has developed close working relationships with the other key players we brought into the business in 2022.
“Old” Kavango struggled with this in the past, but today we are able to have serious, technical and commercial discussions with external parties thanks in part to Jeremy’s work. The recent progress we made with Sandfire has been a perfect case in point.
Having already had such a profound influence on Kavango, it made perfect sense to consolidate Jeremy’s position and have him join our board. In this role, he can better shape and support our ambitions going forward.
Jeremy is an extremely experienced geophysical consultant, having spent more than 28 years in international mineral exploration. There aren't many commodities he hasn’t worked with, and he’s consulted to more than 100 of Canada's leading junior and major exploration/mining companies–not to mention governments on five continents.
As for Peter, I think we’ve really added someone special to the team here.
As well as becoming a non-executive director for Kavango, Peter is the Chairman of Moxico Resources; the majority owner and operator of the Mimbula Copper Project in Zambia.
Mimbula is a producing operation, and Peter’s wealth of commercial experience in our sector will be invaluable as our own projects move forward.
His experience doesn’t stop there, either. As an experienced lawyer, he’s acted as General Counsel for KPMG and Reunion Mining PLC. He also served as Director and Managing Director of ZincOx Resources PLC.
Peter has been raising capital since the ‘90s and has been involved in successful projects including the development of a gold mine in Zambia, a copper mine in Zimbabwe, and the Skorpion zinc mine in Namibia (prior to its takeover by Anglo-American).
Peter’s experience is clear, and I believe his—alongside Jeremy’s—addition to the board puts us in a very strong position going into 2023.
Ready to go again
With such positive developments on a corporate level, we’re hoping to take equally significant strides forward across our projects on the ground this year.
Our share price is lower than I would like it to be right now, and I don’t believe it’s a true reflection of where we are as a company. With the progress we are making, I expect the market to follow suit as conditions improve and, hopefully, we have demonstrable success in the field.
Drilling will start again this week at the KCB, and we’ll be testing what stands to be a key development.
Using CSAMT technology, we believe we’ve identified a horizon of the D’Kar/Ngwako Pan.
If we can confirm this, we’ll be the first company to have done so at depth from the surface without drilling first. If the current drill test is successful, we believe we have a truly ground-breaking technology for the KCB exploration sector.
If we don’t hit that crucial D’Kar/Ngwako Pan contact this time, it won’t mean failure for the technology, but rather that the crucial horizon is deeper than we would need to be economically viable.
What fills us with hope is that the latest lines of CSAMT we ran appear to show rock layers (the “stratigraphy”) down to about 4km depth. One of these layers is highly likely to represent the D’Kar/Ngwako Pan contact, but, as always, the question in metal exploration is how deep is it?
The only way to find out is to drill.
So, right now, we need to wait and see what happens with Hole KCBRC006…
It’s work like this that excites me the most–even during difficult market periods such as those we’ve all recently experienced.
I look forward now to what the New Year will bring and hope to be able to update you before too long on the steps we are taking to deliver metal onto our books in 2023.
