DorWit is the story of how two old Namibian copper camps – Dordabis and Witvlei – were combined into a single modern exploration play and passed through a series of joint-venture hands to become one of Noronex’s key growth assets in the Kalahari Copper Belt.
In the modern era, the land that became DorWit was held by a Namibian private company called Aloe Investments Two Hundred Thirty Seven (Aloe 237), which held Exclusive Prospecting Licences (EPLs) 7028, 7029, and 7030 in central Namibia.
These licences cover approximately 65 kilometres of prospective Kalahari Copper Belt stratigraphy, about 150 kilometres east of Windhoek, and host six historic copper deposits and prospects: Dordabis, Gembsbokvley, Christiadore, Okasewa, Malachite Pan and Witvlei Pos.
The “DorWit” label itself was coined to reflect that dual heritage – Dordabis plus Witvlei.
The first serious attempt to repackage these brownfields copper occurrences for the ASX–TSX junior space came from White Metal Resources Corp.
In 2019, White Metal signed a binding letter of intent granting it the right to acquire up to 95% of Aloe 237 through an earn-in and call option structure originally negotiated with RZJ Capital Management. Aloe 237, in turn, held 100% of the DorWit copper–silver project via EPLs 7028–7030.
Over the following months, White Metal completed due diligence, confirmed the historical data and began referring to the consolidated package as the DorWit Copper–Silver Project.
Under White Metal, the early work focused mainly on pulling decades of data into a coherent model.
The company compiled historical drilling and mining records, digitised old sections, re-logged available core and undertook new mapping and geochemical sampling across the licence block.
The attraction was obvious. Multiple past-producing or historically drilled deposits sitting on granted tenure, with copper grades deemed attractive by Kalahari standards and plenty of untested strike between them.
The next significant shift came in 2020, when Noronex used the DorWit ground as a cornerstone of its re-entry to the ASX as a copper explorer.
Through the acquisition of 80% of Larchmont Investments Pty Ltd (LIP), Noronex stepped into the existing Aloe 237 earn-in and call-option structure. LIP held the right to earn up to 70% of Aloe 237 and a call option over a further 25%, giving a potential 95% stake in the Namibian vehicle.
Because Noronex controlled 80% of LIP, its compelling indirect interest in Aloe 237 was approximately 76% upon completion of the full earn-in.
Larchmont itself was not originally a Noronex creation. It pre-existed as a private Australian vehicle that had negotiated rights over Aloe 237 through earlier agreements linked to RZJ Capital.
When Noronex acquired 80% of Larchmont in late 2020, it effectively stepped into Larchmont’s shoes, inheriting the entire earn-in pathway and call-option rights that Larchmont already held. This allowed Noronex to indirectly take control of Aloe 237 rather than negotiate a fresh deal from scratch.
From that point on, Noronex became the public face and technical driver of DorWit, while White Metal retained a minority interest and exposure to any upside.
Noronex rebranded the Namibian copper ground as part of a broader Kalahari Copper Belt portfolio, while retaining the DorWit identity for the combined Witvlei–Dordabis area.
The company’s 2020–2021 work programmes focused on verifying historical resources and testing extensions.
At Witvlei, Noronex inherited a JORC 2012 resource of 8.8 million tonnes at 1.28% copper, or about 112,500 tonnes of contained copper across the Malachite Pan, Okasewa and Christiadore deposits.
When Dordabis is included, the wider DorWit package in Namibia is reported as about 10 million tonnes at 1.3% copper under JORC 2012, split between 2.9 million tonnes of indicated resources and 7.1 million tonnes of inferred resources.
That gave the project absolute scale rather than just historical curiosity value.
With the ownership structure clarified, Noronex moved into more aggressive exploration. The company conducted geophysical surveys and soil geochemistry to refine targets around and between the known deposits, then began systematic drilling.
At Christiadore and the nearby Otjiwaru prospect, Noronex completed a 17-hole reverse-circulation programme totalling 3,344 metres to test along strike and down-dip from historical workings.
Follow-up diamond drilling was planned to understand better the geometry and controls on mineralisation, particularly where conductivity and soil anomalies suggested broader systems than the historical pits and trenches implied.
Additional work also targeted a sub-cropping copper anomaly at Dalheim, south of Okasewa, defined by a 2.5-kilometre by 1.2-kilometre copper-in-soil halo in a structurally altered zone.
At the same time, Noronex pushed the DorWit story as part of a much larger belt-scale play. Across Namibia and Botswana, the company now controls or has access to roughly 858,000 hectares of ground along 300 kilometres of the Kalahari Copper Belt, with DorWit at the western end of the Namibian package and newer earn-in areas such as Humpback, Damara, and Powerline to the east, under strategic alliance and earn-in agreements with South32.
That regional context has shaped how DorWit is viewed internally: necessary for its defined tonnes and grade, but also as a proven cluster inside a much larger pipeline of targets.
In late 2025, Noronex agreed to sell the Witvlei portion of its Namibian portfolio (EPL 7028 and 7029) to Joint Era Mining (JEM) for A$4.5 million in staged cash payments, with A$3.6 million attributable to Noronex given its 80% share of the Larchmont joint-venture vehicle.
Witvlei represents only about 3.5% of the company’s Namibian licence area by surface but hosts the bulk of the current JORC resource.
The deal structure sees JEM take on the development risk and capital requirements at Witvlei. At the same time, Noronex steps back to focus on its belt-scale copper exploration and its new Etango North uranium project, where a maiden drilling campaign is planned from early 2026.
EPL 7030 (the Dordabis part of DorWit) remains outside the sale and stays in the Noronex stable.
In short, DorWit has moved from a collection of legacy copper showings in two rural Namibian districts into a modern, JORC-compliant copper project that has already attracted multiple waves of investment and now has a dedicated development partner.
The first modern owner at the project scale was Aloe 237, the Namibian vehicle that assembled the licences.
White Metal formalised the DorWit concept and began the technical reset; Noronex used it as the backbone of its Namibian copper strategy, upgraded the resources and pushed new drilling; and, most recently, Joint Era Mining has stepped in to take Witvlei toward commercial development.
The ground position is significant; the resource base for Witvlei alone sits in the eight-to-ten-million-tonne range at around 1.3% copper, and the remaining Dordabis licence gives Noronex ongoing leverage to any further value created along this branch of the Kalahari Copper Belt.
