A good post by Okenia on LSE, responding to a post suggesting that the 21.5% figure was merely an attention grabber:
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okenia
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RE: Botswana
Today 11:22
The 21.5% figure does tell you something very interesting though - which is the nature of the mineralisation and wider asset.
A lot of copper mines have diffuse copper oxides or sulphides over a larger volume, giving head grades of 0.5% or thereabouts. These need to be massive projects with economies of scale for that to work economically. The amount of ore that needs to be moved is eye-watering. Ouch.
And then you get various variants of volcanic-based primary copper deposits which are much higher grade but can often be small or beads-on-a-string (eb VMS clusters) or a tad too deep to reach (that vertical sheet of copper that cupric canyon has, for example).
The fact that ANY intersection can give you figures of 21% immediately tells you the style of mineralisation that this isn't, and that's critical.
So yes it may be a modest intersection (it doesn't say to be fair) but the very existence of 21% is very very important.
The other thing that I have as top-line issues is the flatness of the deposit (cf my comments about that Cupric deposit, which is a thin sheet on its side and going to great depth, requiring a complex and almost baroque mine design). It's shallow enough to be open-pittable (and everyone wants to do sunshine mining these days) but it extends over what is increasingly looking like a massive, massive area. That would make it very attractive to a purchaser as you'd have one pit you could run immediately but also know there's enough equivalent stuff elsewhere to find in due course, and so give yourself a very very long mine life. A big open pit deposit with multi-decade mine life is just the sort of thing to flicker the needle of a major.
And I fully agree that you need to work this up as fast as possible before a major snaffles it with a cheeky low-ball offer. Which is probably why MOD have mobilised just so many rigs on site."
