At face value, the journey of microcap, Cobre Limited (ASX:CBE) this year warrants closer attention.
The company’s Ngami Project in Botswana is situated over the African Kalahari Copper Belt (KCB), which Cobre hopes to help develop into a new mineral province. Cobre’s Ngami permit covers some 500km of target area overlying the KCB.
Step out drilling recently concluded on-site has turned up another intersection with visible mineralisation, this time at 16m thick.
No data on copper grades is available yet as assays are still pending.
What is known, however, is that mineralisation extends to a depth of at least 80m. The lateral strike length of the Ngami’s main exploration area is 4km long.
Also worthy of highlight is that this represents the company's fifth successful thick copper intersection pulled from Ngami, which straddles the northern end of the KCB.
“We’re delighted with the results from the latest drill hole at Ngami,” Cobre Limited executive chair Martin Holland said.
“This hole confirms mineralisation continues at depth…given the significant copper results and strong potential, Cobre has mobilised a second drill rig to site.”
“Plans are underway to deploy additional rigs to the project by the year end in order to unlock this exciting copper discovery.”
YTD returns for shareholders are up over 450%. Let’s take a look at a timeline of events this year so far.
In early July, Cobre shares rose 28% as the company launched drilling at the Ngami project. At the time, the company noted previous drillholes on site had intersected copper and silver.
“The KCB is one of the most prospective copper belts world-wide,” Holland said at the time.
A month later, in early August, the company’s shares rocketed 267% as the company continued its success after previously posting photographs of cores extracted from Ngami full of visible copper mineralisation.
Those photos alone, which showed thick blue copper mineralisation, clearly left investors' mouths watering.
Less than a week later, Cobre got underway with a separate infill diamond rig drill run at Ngami.
In mid-August, the company’s share price jumped 40% again as geotechs hit fresh copper mineralisation at Ngami.
Part of investor enthusiasm for the copper project is no doubt also due to projected forecasts of the copper market.
Everybody from BloombergNEF to the Australian Chief Economist predict copper prices to continue experiencing a rally well into the 2030s.
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