Noronex Limited has signed a new contract to kick off its maiden 4000m RC drilling program by the end of the month at the company’s 100 per cent-owned Humpback project in Namibia’s Kalahari Copper Belt.
The company is fully funded for the drill program, to be conducted by Namibian-based Hammerstein Drilling, after a recent capital raise of about $883,545. Management plans to focus its drilling campaign on high-priority copper-silver exploration targets identified at its Fiesta and Blowhole prospects.
This area has been underexplored, and we’re eager to follow up on historical intercepts, such as 8m @ 2.5% Cu and 9m @ 1.8% Cu, 82 g/t Ag. By testing a number of targets we’ll gain a more detailed understanding of the scale of mineralisation in this area. Our focus is on targets defined on a sheared fold closure. Blowhole is located near the Botswana border and is along the same mineralised horizon as recent copper discoveries and projects across the border. Noronex executive director James Thompson
The company’s exploration tenement package in Namibia covers about 7000 square kilometres of the highly-prospective, but underexplored Kalahari Copper Belt that runs from central Namibia to north-eastern Botswana. The tenements contain about 300km of strike length through the sheared contact between the D’Kar and Ngwana Pan Formation (D’Kar-NPF) that hosts most of the Kalahari Copper Belt deposits.
Noronex’s Fiesta prospect lies in the south-west of the tenement group, where historical copper intercepts are similar to those seen in other Central African copper belt deposits more than 400km to the east in Botswana. They include Khoemacau’s Zone 5 with a 2022 JORC-compliant operations ore reserve estimate of 31.4 million tonnes at 2 per cent copper and 19.75 grams per tonne silver.
Historical drilling at Fiesta, mostly within an 800m zone along strike, has defined a steeply-dipping sheet of copper-silver mineralisation. The best grade intercept at Fiesta is 8m at 2.5 per cent copper and 78g/t silver from 127m. The best true thickness of 4m is about 15.5m from a historical intercept of 31m at 0.9 per cent copper and 33g/t silver from 154m.
Noronex says copper-rich zones exceeding 20m identified in historical drilling were often not followed up. It is now planning an infill drilling campaign to test the continuity of the mineralisation between previous holes.
While it says copper mineralisation is developed in about 3.5km of strike at Fiesta, several high-priority targets have been defined along strike both within and beyond the known envelope and structures.
The company’s Blowhole prospect lies about 130km north-east along strike from Fiesta, just inside Namibia’s shared border with Botswana. Aeromagnetic surveys confirm Blowhole’s direct strike continuity with the same sheared antiformal D’Kar-NPF contact that hosts mineralisation at Cobre’s Ngami and Thul prospects, which are less than 100km to the north-east.
Cobre has reported several encouraging intersections from the site, including 10.7m at 1.3 per cent copper under shallow cover. Noronex plans to drill five holes at Blowhole – the first ever put into the prospect.
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