Discovery to open copper mine by 2010

WANETSHA MOSINYI
Staff Writer | Friday July 25, 2008 00:00

Addressing the Botswana Resource Conference on Wednesday, Brad Sampson said the company, which is listed on the Australian, Botswana and AIM stock exchanges, hopes to finish pre-feasibility studies in time so that construction can start.

Sampson said they recently changed the name of their north-western Botswana project to represent communities around the project.

'Bo' in Boseto represents Botswana, Bodibeng and Botlhalogo villages, while 'Se' is for Sehitwa and 'To' is for Toteng.

Over the next year, Discovery Metals plans to accelerate ground exploration and follow-up drilling programmes encompassing all of its expanded tenements.

Recently, Discovery Metals announced that it had doubled its copper-silver tenements in north-western Botswana following its recent acquisition of seven more prospecting licences.

The company received formal approval from the Department of Geological Survey for the additional prospecting licences, which cover 5,700 square kilometres stretching as a continuation from the western boundary of the company's current copper-silver tenements across to the Namibian border.

According to the company's estimates, an initial assessment of the seven new tenements indicate they have the potential to contain approximately 600 strike kilometres of mineralisation of a similar style to that found in the company's current Zeta, Plutus and Petra Inferred Mineral resources.

Discovery's major assets is Boseto and the Dikoloti Nickel Project in the North East. There are three smaller Australian projects, two of which are joint-ventured with the partners potentially earning into 51 percent equity.

The tenement package consists of seven prospecting licences covering an area of 6,400km sq within the Kalahari Copper Belt. The copper project covers a large area of significant copper-silver mineralisation, which potentially occurs over hundreds of strike kilometres.

The Dikoloti nickel project comprises four prospecting licences covering 610km sq surrounding the three nickel deposits of BCL Limited in the Selebi-Phikwe region of north-eastern Botswana.

The entire project is within 45km of BCL's smelter facility, which is the largest nickel processing facility in Africa.