Long before the Kaoko Basin became the stage for a new wave of junior explorers, the ground was stitched together under a broad licence package controlled by Teck Resources and later advanced in partnership with INV Metals Inc.
In 2009, INV Metals entered into a joint venture with Teck, giving it the right to earn into Teck’s Namibian copper ground by funding exploration.
Under the agreement effective October 28, 2009, INV Metals committed to spending C$7 million over four years to earn up to 50 per cent of the Kaoko property. By 2012, the Canadian junior had amended the agreement with Teck and secured a 35 per cent interest outright, carrying Teck’s obligation for further exploration up to a cap of CAD 6.1 million.
The Kaoko Copper–Silver Property, as it was then styled, covered an expansive footprint of approximately 7,360 square kilometres across 10 Exclusive Prospecting Licences (EPLs) held by Teck, with INV Metals holding an additional 1,367 square kilometres in seven further licences.
Taken together, the ground stretched some 75 kilometres east to west and 200 kilometres north to south in the Kunene Region, mapped along what geologists identified as the Okohongo Horizon—a mineralised belt running for nearly 200 kilometres and punctuated by more than 200 copper showings.
Aloe Investments, through its Namibian entity Aloe 238 (Pty) Ltd, was also involved as a local licence-holding partner in parts of the Kaoko package, ensuring compliance with Namibia’s equity participation requirements and later acting as the licence holder for the Okohongo deposit.
Aloe 238 is ultimately owned by Namibian shareholders, making it an empowerment vehicle designed to give local stakeholders equity exposure in projects operated by foreign explorers.
Exploration under the Teck–INV partnership was detailed in a 2012 NI 43-101 technical report, which laid out the case for Kaoko as an analogue to the Central African Copperbelt.
The work confirmed that Damara-age sedimentary horizons hosted copper sulphides, with mineralisation marked by chalcocite, bornite, and chalcopyrite.
The most advanced prospect was Okohongo, where INV Metals defined an inferred resource of 10.2 million tonnes grading 1.1 per cent copper and 17.8 grams per tonne silver at a 0.3 per cent Cu cut-off.
This was the first time Okohongo was framed as a potentially mineable deposit rather than a scattered occurrence.
Other targets across the licence package also returned substantial numbers. At Okozonduno, drilling delivered 20 metres at 1.2 per cent copper with silver credits, including a higher-grade internal hit of 7 metres at 2.8 per cent copper.
At Omatapati, stockwork and disseminated sulphides in dolomite and siltstone produced standout intervals, such as 19 metres at 2.0 per cent copper and 119.8 grams per tonne silver, with internal bands carrying up to 6.4 per cent copper and 410 grams per tonne silver.
Beyond these headline results, INV Metals also announced discoveries during regional exploration. In January 2012, the company reported a showing southeast of Okohongo, where grab samples from surface outcrops returned values of up to 2.6 per cent copper and 84 grams per tonne silver across widths of up to 10 metres.
The technical report recommended an expanded programme of drilling, basin analysis, geochemical surveys and metallurgical test work to advance multiple prospects toward resource definition.
While commodity prices and shifting corporate priorities eventually saw INV Metals and Teck step back from the ground, their work laid the structural and geological foundation that today’s explorers still rely on.
INV Metals was a Canadian-listed junior explorer headquartered in Toronto.
Founded in 2006 as International Nickel Ventures, the company rebranded as INV Metals as it expanded its operations beyond nickel.
Its Namibian ground was one of its first international copper plays, but over time, the company shifted its focus to precious metals.
By the mid-2010s, its flagship became the Loma Larga gold–silver–copper project in Ecuador, which commanded the bulk of its budget and technical effort. That shift eventually led to its acquisition by Dundee Precious Metals in 2021, in an all-share transaction valued at about C$132 million.
The deal absorbed INV Metals into Dundee’s portfolio, closing the chapter on INV as a standalone company.
Teck Resources, for its part, had a broader footprint in Namibia than just the Kaoko licences.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, it was also involved in the Haib Copper Project in the country’s south near Noordoewer, one of the world’s oldest known porphyry copper deposits.
Teck evaluated Haib’s large-tonnage, low-grade potential through joint venture arrangements before eventually withdrawing to concentrate on higher-grade, tier-one assets in the Americas.
The company’s Namibian copper portfolio was thus bookended by Haib in the south and Kaoko in the northwest, representing part of its global strategy at the time to capture frontier copper opportunities.
As priorities shifted to projects like Quebrada Blanca 2 in Chile and Highland Valley in Canada, Namibia fell away from its growth pipeline, and Teck exited active exploration in the country.
By the mid-2010s, both INV Metals and Teck had relinquished their ground in the Kaoko Basin. INV pivoted to South America, where Loma Larga became its defining project, while Teck retrenched to larger copper jurisdictions in the Americas.
Aloe, having served as the local licence holder and empowerment partner during the INV–Teck era, remained in place as a Namibian-owned vehicle and later partnered with new entrants such as Himba Metals, under which Okohongo is now being advanced.
