It’s just over 10 months since Midas, part of the Richardson Street collective of companies that includes FireFly Metals and Andean Silver, announced the acquisition of the Otavi copper project in Namibia and just three months since the deal closed.

FireFly managing director Steve Parsons and executive director Michael Naylor hold 6.2% of Midas and are corporate consultants.

Midas managing director Mark Calderwood, who previously ran West African gold producer Perseus Mining, is the company’s largest shareholder with 5.3%.

Otavi spans 1776 square kilometres of Namibia’s Kaoko Copper Belt, which has similar geology to major nearby copper-producing countries Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

An initial resource for the T-13 deposit is due within weeks, as well as assays from ongoing drilling.

Historical intercepts at T-13 have included 17m at 7.24% copper and 144.4 grams per tonne silver; 45m at 2.43% copper and 54.9g/t silver; 39.9m at 2.4% copper and 36.8g/t silver; and 20m at 4.16% copper and 13.5g/t silver.

“The resource will be medium-grade, the one we come out with initially, but it has a high-grade core that represents most of the metal,” Calderwood said.

In January, Midas reported a near-surface, high-grade copper and silver discovery in initial drilling at the Spaatzu prospect, which is 12km west of T-13 and spans more than 2.5km of strike.

The company reported 16m at 2.55% copper and 72.6g/t, or 2.33 ounces per tonne silver, within a broader zone of 44m at 1.36% copper and 36.8g/t silver from 23m.

Subsequent results reported last month from Spaatzu included 26m at 1.37% copper and 31.1g/t silver from 45m, including 6m at 2.39% copper and 42.7g/t silver and 11m at 1.62% copper and 43.6g/t silver; 56m at 0.57% copper, 13.9g/t silver and 1.12% lead from 4m, including 5m at 1.52% copper and 47.8g/t silver and 4m at 1.79% copper and 27.8g/t silver; and 18m at 1.1% copper and 26.5g/t silver from 70m, including 11m at 1.51% copper and 36.4g/t silver.

Busy year

Midas had A$8.8 million in cash at the end of December and is well-funded for its near-term exploration plans.

“We’ve got four rigs operating, so it’s going to be a busy year,” Calderwood said, adding that a fifth drill rig was on the way.

“The news flow will start in April in terms of resource and drilling. Then we’ll put another rig on the Deblin deposit, because we want to put a resource out on that later this year, and we’re going to start testing a bunch of targets.”

Midas’ aim is to get resource estimates out for three deposits in 2026.

Calderwood said the company was targeting at least 500,000 tonnes of contained copper in resources this year.

Euroz Hartleys analyst Kyle De Souza is forecasting a resource of 572,000t of copper equivalent across four deposits – not including Spaatzu.

Only around 40% of the Otavi project has been explored.

“But even the half that has been explored has lots of anomalies that haven’t been drill tested, so there’s a big pipeline of drill targets, and now we’re just waiting to get out of the wet season,” Calderwood said.

“We can spread our wings out a bit more and start testing a whole bunch of other things.”

De Souza, who visited the site last month, said there was no need to trawl through online databases to find targets for drilling.

“It’s so underexplored, there is value in just walking the ground to try and find outcrops which no one has seen before,” he said.

Calderwood said the aim was to find multiple moderate-sized deposits.

“We’re not really targeting the massive, multimillion-tonne type of copper deposits,” he said.

“But the stuff we’re looking at has got good width, good grade, and good metallurgy, so we’re not chasing these little narrow things.

“We’re chasing decent orebodies, good grades, and it’s copper and precious metals in a great country.

“You can’t beat Namibia in Africa in terms of infrastructure and physical stability and all that sort of stuff.”

Euroz has a speculative buy rating for Midas and a price target of A$1.18 per share, well above this week’s wide trading range of A70-80c per share.

“I can comfortably say this is one of the most exciting copper exploration opportunities on the ASX,” De Souza said.

“We’re backing the team to do what they do best; find economic deposits using a methodical approach and then (if they get to do it themselves) get it out of the ground.”