Bezant Resources has received the Environmental Clearance Certificate for the Hope and Gorob Mining Project ML 246 on EPL 5796.
The environmental certificate activates mining licence 246 granted in 2024, covering resources with a projected open-pit and underground mining capacity of over 11 years life of mine.
The Hope and Gorob Copper-Gold project has a defined JORC (2012) compliant resource of 15Mt at 1.2% Cu, containing 190,000 tons of copper.
The licence covers the area where the Hope, Gorob, Vendome, Anomaly, Du Preez and Luigi deposits are located.
Exploration licences 5796, 6605 and 7170 were also extended by the Ministry of Mines and Energy in 2024.
The licence is prospective for volcanic-hosted massive Sulphide (VMS) copper-gold deposits associated with the Matchless Copper Belt.
The Hope Copper-Gold project spans approximately 800 km2 within the prospective Matchless Copper Belt in central Namibia.
The project comprises mining licence 246, which is active over the Hope, Gorob, Vendome and Anomaly deposits, which the company is exploring for near-term, open-pit mining potential, plus adjacent tenures EPL 5796 (243 km2), EPL6605 (419 km2) and EPL7170 (140 km2).
The licences are located approximately 100km southwest of Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, and about 120km southeast of Walvis Bay’s major African port.
In 2022, Bezant Resources conducted shallow resource upgrade drilling across the known resource in the property.
This work facilitated an updated mineral resource estimate for licence ML246, which was released in 2023.
The total JORC (2012) compliant, indicated and inferred resources, reported in the 2023 mineral resource estimate across all four main deposits (Hope, Gorob, Vendome and Anomaly), are estimated to contain 15Mt gross at 1.2% Cu, totalling 190, 000 tons of contained copper.
The Hope Deposit alone accounts for 4.2 Mt at a copper grade of 1.7%, representing approximately 28% of the total tonnage and 37% of the contained copper in the mineral resource estimate.
The known resources at Hope, Gorob, and Vendome total 4.3Mt of run of mine, with an average copper grade of 1.42%.
The Anomaly, Du Preez, and Luigi deposits and the underground potential for Gorob and Vendome have yet to be assessed in a detailed mining study, which could add additional tonnage to the operation.
Further upside exists to extend the project via possible lateral extensions of these known deposits and other discoveries made over several broadly defined targets on EPLs 5796, 6605 and 7170.
A detailed mine scoping and optimisation study completed in 2024 identified the potential for a 5-year open pit operation, followed by a 4-year underground phase at the Hope deposit.
Production rates are projected at 480ktpa for the open pit resource and 220ktpa for the underground resource, with feed grades of 1.25% Cu / 0.25 g/t Au and 2.04% Cu / 0.48 g/t Au, respectively.
Additionally, the Gorob and Vendome deposits could extend mine life by an extra two years at a production rate of 480ktpa and a copper grade of 1.28%.
Further resource upgrades are possible by incorporating unrealised gold potential into the MRE, particularly at Gorob and Vendome, where the historical drill core was not routinely sampled for gold.
In addition, several other targets, including Anomaly, Anomaly A, Luigi and Du Preez, that have either surface evidence of mineralisation or wide-spaced borehole data offer scope for additional open pittable mineralisation subject to further drilling and resource estimation.
Mine design and production schedules have been completed for the open pit portion of the Hope Resource, and more recently, geotechnical test work and highly successful ore sorter optimisation and modulation tests have been completed.
Previous ore processing test work indicated excellent recoveries of copper and gold in concentrate via conventional flotation.
The ability to produce a high-grade pre-concentrate using a dry ore sorting process ahead of final concentration via flotation provides the means of generating a final product at the requisite grade for sale.
