Thirteen months after Celsius Resources announced its intention to exit the Opuwo Cobalt-Copper Project in north-western Namibia, the future of one of the country’s most significant critical minerals assets appears increasingly uncertain.
Celsius Resources exited the Opuwo project for strategic reasons, citing a refocus on its Makilala project, capital discipline and weak cobalt market conditions, rather than geological, metallurgical or regulatory shortcomings at Opuwo.
The project, once positioned as a potential cornerstone cobalt development in southern Africa, has seen no formal transfer, restart or alternative development pathway publicly confirmed since the Australian-listed company flagged its withdrawal.
While the licence remains in place, the absence of a new operator or disclosed transaction has left the project effectively dormant, raising questions about whether Opuwo will progress or remain stalled despite its scale.
The Opuwo project is located approximately 730km north-west of Windhoek, in a mining-friendly, politically stable jurisdiction, with access to grid power, water, and established services.
Celsius had consistently described the asset as offering multiple development options due to its size and infrastructure setting.
Celsius Resources invested several million dollars in advancing the Opuwo Cobalt-Copper Project before exiting Namibia.
Company disclosures show that capitalised exploration and evaluation spending was impaired at about US$6.0 million by June 2024, with the project later written down by a further AU$6.1 million in 2025 as development prospects weakened. By early 2025, Celsius had revalued the Opuwo asset to about US$3.0 million on its balance sheet, reflecting a sharp reduction from historical investment levels.
The figures indicate that while Opuwo delivered a significant mineral resource and strong metallurgical results, the company ultimately wrote off a substantial portion of its sunk costs as part of its strategic withdrawal from the project.
An updated Mineral Resource Estimate announced on 1 July 2021, based on all drilling completed by Celsius at the project, reported a total resource of 225.5 million tonnes grading 0.12% cobalt, 0.43% copper and 0.54% zinc.
This equates to approximately 259,000 tonnes of contained cobalt and about 970,000 tonnes of contained copper.
The resource was classified as 45.3 million tonnes in the Indicated category, grading 0.11% cobalt, 0.44% copper and 0.51% zinc, and 180.2 million tonnes in the Inferred category, grading 0.12% cobalt, 0.43% copper and 0.55% zinc.
Despite its lower average grades, the deposit’s scale placed it among the more substantial undeveloped cobalt resources globally.
In 2022, Celsius completed a metallurgical diamond drilling programme totalling 1,089 metres across nine large-diameter PQ drill holes, specifically designed to provide representative samples from the Dolostone Ore Formation below the oxidation zone.
Metallurgical test work, which had been halted in 2019 due to weak cobalt prices, was reinitiated as part of this programme.
Subsequent test work undertaken at Mintek Laboratories demonstrated cobalt recoveries of up to 95% and copper recoveries of up to 98% using a roasting and sulphuric-acid tank-leach process.
These results represented a significant improvement over earlier autoclave leaching test work, which had delivered recoveries of 72.6% for cobalt and 74.1% for copper. They confirmed that the Opuwo ore is technically amenable to downstream processing.
However, despite the defined resource and encouraging metallurgical outcomes, the project did not advance into scoping or feasibility study stages.
No capital cost estimates, production profiles, or permitting timelines were published before Celsius announced its intention to divest, leaving Opuwo at an advanced resource definition and metallurgical testing stage rather than a development-ready position.
As Namibia accelerates its positioning within global critical minerals supply chains, the prolonged uncertainty around Opuwo highlights the gap that can emerge between geological scale and development momentum, particularly in capital-intensive commodities such as cobalt.
