Modern Mining July 2016

COUNTRY FOCUS BOTSWANA

this, Hanna has recently announced his departure from the board of nickel miner Western Areas Ltd, after 12 years serving as its inaugural MD and then four years as a non-executive director, so that he can devote all his time and energy to MOD. Currently, approximately 60 people are employed at T3 through the MOD/ Metal Tiger joint venture, with the level of activity still increasing. The explo- ration effort is led by MOD’s General Manager Exploration (Africa), Jacques Janse van Rensburg, a South African geologist with extensive experience not only in Botswana but also South Africa and the DRC. He has built up considerable experience in the Kalahari Copperbelt, having being project man- ager with Hana Mining (later bought by Cupric Canyon) for three years prior to joining MOD in 2011. The current priority is to com- plete a maiden resource for T3 in the third quarter of this year – just several months from the first drilling of the target – and this work is currently on track. While T3 is currently receiving the bulk of the joint venture’s attention, exploration programmes are also being planned for other targets acquired as part of the DMI deal. These include T4 (Tshimologo), where RC drilling in February this year intersected 2 m at 6,12 % Cu and 111 g/t Ag, T5 and T7 (Ghanzi South). Looking at the prospects for the Kalahari Copperbelt over the next sev- eral years, Cupric Canyon and MOD Resources between them hold the bulk of the prospective ground and are the only companies with any real pros- pect of developing mines in the area in the near to medium term. Cupric is well advanced at this stage with its Zone 5 project, which it expects to have in production by 2019. By con- trast, MOD (in association, of course, with Metal Tiger) is in a much earlier phase in the exploration/development cycle. Whether T3 can support a mine remains to be seen but certainly the early results are encouraging and one suspects that it is a deposit that one will be hearing much more about over the coming months. Report by Arthur Tassell, photos by Nick O’Reilly (QP for Metal Tiger)

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“In addition to the vein hosted and disseminated chalcopyrite minerali- sation, high tenor copper sulphides including bornite and covellite have been intersected in veins in many drill holes,” says MOD in the release. “Very high individual silver assays (including 199 g/t, 244 g/t and 363 g/t Ag in hole MO-G-09D) are generally associated with very high individual copper assays (including 8,36 %, 10,2 % and 21,5 % Cu in hole MO-G‑09D) within veins where assays are available. MO-G‑09D is located at the eastern end of the resource area and further drilling is required to determine the extent of these bonanza Cu/Ag veins.” The release notes that MOD has received further soil samples that have identified a new 4 km long copper/zinc anomaly to the east and west of the Phase 1 resource area, extending the zone of soil anomalies more than 12 km along the T3 Dome. In addition, RC drilling has begun to test an extensive copper/zinc anomaly approximately 3 km east of Phase 1. The effort that MOD is putting into the resource drilling programme gives some indication of the excitement within the company over the poten- tial of the T3 discovery. Reflecting

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July 2016  MODERN MINING  39