One Bullion has identified 32 potential exploration areas across its Maitengwe Gold Project in northeastern Botswana, selecting eight for priority field investigations following an 11,654-line-kilometre airborne geophysical survey.
The Canadian exploration company announced on 13 November 2026 that the targets had been grouped into nine clusters across the 580.75-square-kilometre project, situated between Tutume and the Zimbabwe border.
The findings represent a step towards identifying potential gold-bearing structures beneath the Kalahari sands, although the company cautioned that the targets remain preliminary and have not been confirmed as mineralised zones.
One Bullion plans to undertake geological mapping, geochemical sampling and selective trenching before deciding whether any of the identified areas warrant reverse-circulation drilling.
The project comprises prospecting licences PL 012/2018 and PL 235/2016, covering approximately 58,075 hectares. One Bullion holds the licences through its wholly owned Botswana subsidiary, Premier Gold Resources.
The latest exploration programme follows a high-resolution airborne magnetic-gradient and radiometric survey conducted by Xcalibur Smart Mapping between 7 and 30 July 2026.
The survey covered the project at 50-metre flight-line spacing, providing detailed information about geological structures concealed beneath transported Kalahari sands.
Campbell & Walker Geophysics processed and conducted preliminary interpretation of the survey data, which One Bullion received in final form on 14 October.
The company’s initial assessment identified several geological features considered worthy of further investigation, including curved magnetic bands, contacts between different rock formations and intersecting structural trends.
Eight areas have been selected for the first phase of field verification, with the remaining 24 retained for further assessment.
One Bullion chief executive Adam Berk said the survey had enabled the company to move from assessing a large exploration area towards investigating specific geological targets.
“Maitengwe is now moving from a large, underexplored land position to a series of specific geological questions that we can test in the field,” Berk said.
“The geophysical program has given us a much clearer view of the concealed rock architecture beneath Kalahari cover. Our focus is on testing the structural positions that may matter for gold, such as contacts, bends and intersecting trends.”
He said the company intended to verify the geology and establish the effectiveness of its sampling methods before advancing the strongest targets to trenching and drilling.
“We intend to verify the geology, establish where our sampling methods are effective and advance only the most compelling targets to trenching and RC drilling. That staged approach is designed to deploy capital carefully while building a technically credible exploration pipeline at Maitengwe.”
The Maitengwe project lies within the Archean Francistown Granite–Greenstone Complex on the southwestern margin of the Zimbabwe Craton.
According to One Bullion, the geological setting contains rock formations and structural features that may be prospective for gold, including shear zones, lithological contacts, folds and quartz-carbonate vein systems.
However, extensive Kalahari sand cover has restricted conventional geological mapping and complicated the identification of mineralisation through surface sampling.
The company must therefore establish whether the magnetic features identified by the airborne survey represent potentially favourable geological structures or unrelated rock formations.
Its proposed exploration programme will begin with verification of the geophysical data against historical geological records, followed by field mapping and sampling to establish the thickness of the sand cover and the nature of the underlying bedrock.
Where conditions permit, One Bullion may undertake selective trenching to expose geological contacts, alteration zones and possible sulphide mineralisation.
Areas where the sand cover makes trenching ineffective could instead be investigated using shallow subsurface sampling techniques.
Only targets supported by geological observations and verified geochemical results will be considered for staged reverse-circulation drilling.
The company said the initial drilling would focus on shallow bedrock and interpreted structural features, with hole depths and orientations determined by the results of field investigations.
Further reverse-circulation or diamond drilling would depend on the geological and assay results.
One Bullion has not committed to a drilling start date, number of holes, drilling metres or exploration budget.
The company also confirmed that Botswana’s Department of Environmental Protection granted Environmental Impact Statement approval for exploration on PL 012/2018, effective from 20 April 2026 for two years.
However, the approval is subject to environmental conditions and does not automatically authorise all proposed activities across both prospecting licences.
Additional land access arrangements and activity-specific approvals will be required before ground-disturbing work can proceed at individual locations.
Despite identifying 32 reconnaissance areas, One Bullion stressed that the geophysical results do not establish the presence of gold mineralisation.
The company has not reported new gold assay results, mineral resources or reserves at Maitengwe.
The next phase will therefore determine whether the eight priority areas contain geological and geochemical evidence sufficient to justify drilling, with targets that fail to meet the company’s technical criteria expected to be downgraded.
