New Horizon Copper (NHC) has rebuilt the workforce at Kombat Mine to about 429 people and expects it to grow to about 600 by year-end as the new owners prepare the historic copper operation for another restart after flooding halted underground mining last year.
The latest workforce figure appears in a request for quotations issued by NHC for food truck and catering services at Kombat, where activity is increasing as the company advances construction, plant upgrades, and preparations to resume underground mining.
The workforce rebuilding marks a significant turnaround from early 2025, when flooding brought Kombat’s underground operation to a halt, and the majority of its workers were subsequently retrenched.
According to the Chamber of Mines of Namibia, 554 permanent and fixed-term employees were retrenched during 2025, leaving only a small core team at the operation. By the end of that year, New Horizon Copper reported six permanent employees, four temporary employees and 84 contractors.
The shutdown occurred while Kombat was still controlled by Canadian-listed Trigon Metals, which had revived the historic mine after years of inactivity, initially through open-pit production before returning to underground mining.
Trigon operated open-pit mining at Kombat from May 2023 until September 2024, while the Asis West underground operation was mined from February 2024 until January 2025. That underground revival ended on 16 January 2025 when both of the mine’s principal submersible dewatering pumps failed, allowing underground water levels to rise and forcing mining to stop.
Before the shutdown, Kombat had produced about 23,000 tonnes of underground ore in January 2025 at an average grade of 1.62% copper. The flooding and suspension of mining subsequently led to workforce reductions as Trigon tried to restore the operation.
Operational difficulties were followed by a change of ownership when Trigon entered into a definitive share purchase agreement with Horizon Corporation Limited and Kamino Minerals Limited on 29 May 2025 to sell its interest in Kombat.
Under the transaction, Horizon would take over the next phase of Kombat’s development, while Trigon shifted its focus towards exploration projects in Morocco and Namibia’s Kalahari Copper Belt.
The Namibian Competition Commission subsequently approved Kamino Minerals’ acquisition of PNT Financeco Corporation and Trigon Ontario, the companies through which Trigon held its Kombat interest. The transaction was concluded on 23 December 2025, when Horizon Corporation acquired Trigon’s 80% interest in Kombat and associated mineral licences.
Namibian shareholders continued to hold the remaining interests in Kombat, with Texel Mining and Exploration holding 10% and state-owned Epangelo Mining Company holding another 10%. Trigon Mining Namibia subsequently became New Horizon Copper as the new owners embarked on a recapitalisation and redevelopment of the mine.
The ownership structure changed again in 2026 when Horizon Frontier Holdings Limited acquired Kamino Minerals from Drayton Fen Limited, a transaction approved by the Namibian Competition Commission in April.
The Commission’s records show that Kamino controls PNT Financeco, which in turn controls Kombat Holdings Namibia and New Horizon Copper, with NHC owning and controlling the Kombat Project. Horizon Frontier is incorporated in Mauritius and jointly controlled by Oraka Limited and Alderaan Investments Limited, which are also incorporated in Mauritius.
Since taking over Kombat, NHC has embarked on a substantial redevelopment programme, with the initial investment increasing to N$462 million and the company contemplating a longer-term development programme approaching N$1 billion.
A major part of that investment is directed at resolving the underground water problem that halted production in January 2025, an issue that has periodically troubled Kombat throughout its long operating history.
Large-scale underground mining at Kombat dates to 1962 under Tsumeb Corporation Limited. Between 1962 and 2007, the operation mined 12.46 million tonnes of ore grading an average of 2.62% copper, 1.55% lead and 18 grams per tonne silver.
Water management has repeatedly affected the operation, with historical technical records documenting flooding-related interruptions before the mine eventually closed in 2008 and remained out of production for more than a decade. Trigon’s subsequent revival returned the operation first to open-pit production and later to underground mining, but the January 2025 dewatering failure again demonstrated the importance of maintaining sufficient pumping capacity.
NHC’s redevelopment is therefore intended not only to restart the mine, but also to strengthen the infrastructure needed to keep it operating. The company is installing a redesigned dewatering system, upgrading the processing plant, and introducing sensor-based sorting technology.
The first phase is expected to increase processing throughput from the historical design capacity of about 30,000 tonnes a month to 60,000 tonnes a month, while a subsequent expansion could lift capacity to between 90,000 and 120,000 tonnes a month as additional orebodies are brought into the production plan.
As the physical redevelopment advances, NHC has also been rebuilding the workforce across mining, processing, engineering and support functions, with recent recruitment including general and casual workers, underground construction personnel and operators for the new sensor-based sorting plant.
The catering tender provides another indication of the expected increase in activity, with NHC seeking an exclusive on-site food and refreshment service for an initial six-month period, with the possibility of an extension. The service is scheduled to begin on 12 October, around the period when the company expects the processing operation to move into commissioning.
NHC has previously targeted September for underground dewatering, October for plant commissioning and November for the resumption of mining. However, the company has yet to confirm that it has reached the September dewatering milestone publicly.
