The Hope & Gorob Project now has an environmental clearance certificate, which paves the way for the development of the project into a mine.
The project received its mining licence 246 in 2024, covering resources with a projected open-pit and underground mining capacity of over 11 years of mine life.
Bezant Resources, the project’s owners, says the environment ministry reported the approval on its website.
According to Bezant Resources, the ministry will formally write a confirmation in due course, and for now, the company can consider it official.
The environmental certificate activates the official issuing of the mining licence by the mines ministry.
Bezant Resources’ shares jumped on Wednesday to 10.2%.
The Hope Copper-Gold project spans approximately 800 km2 within the prospective Matchless Copper Belt in central Namibia.
The project’s total JORC (2012) compliant, indicated and inferred resources, reported in the 2023 mineral resource estimate across Hope, Gorob, Vendome and Anomaly, are estimated to contain 15Mt gross at 1.2% copper, totalling 190,000 tons of contained copper.
The Hope Deposit alone accounts for 4.2 Mt at a copper grade of 1.7%, representing approximately 28% of the total tonnage and 37% of the contained copper in the mineral resource estimate.
Bezant Resources is exploring near-term, open-pit mining potential, plus adjacent tenures EPL 5796 (243 km2), EPL6605 (419 km2) and EPL7170 (140 km2).
A detailed mine scoping and optimisation study completed in 2024 identified the potential for a 5-year open pit operation, followed by a 4-year underground phase at the Hope deposit.
The production rates are projected at 480ktpa for the open pit resource and 220ktpa for the underground resource, with feed grades of 1.25% Cu / 0.25 g/t gold and 2.04% copper/ 0.48 g/t gold, respectively.
Additionally, the Gorob and Vendome deposits could extend mine life by an extra two years at a production rate of 480ktpa and a copper grade of 1.28%.
The mine design and production schedules have been completed for the open pit portion of the Hope Resource, and more recently, geotechnical test work and highly successful ore sorter optimisation and modulation tests have been completed.
Bezant Resources executive chairperson Colin Bird says the approval of the environmental certificate is an essential milestone in the development of the Hope & Gorob Project.
