The company raised A$6.5 million in its oversubscribed IPO, which was priced at 20c a share. Shortly after listing yesterday, the stock rose to as high as A45c.

Kaoko has two early-stage, but drill-ready, copper projects in Namibia, which is rated as one of the safest and most mining-friendly jurisdictions in Africa.

Kaoko managing director Gerard O’Donovan said the decision to search for copper projects was an easy one, given supply shortages and a strong demand outlook due to electrification and artificial intelligence.

The company started talking to the vendors of its flagship project, Chalkos, in January last year.

“Obviously in April/May, Mark Calderwood and the guys at Richardson Street came out with Midas Minerals, which is 100km to the east of us, and sits in the exact same geological setting,” O’Donovan said.

He said the move by the Steve Parsons and Mike Naylor-backed Midas was vindication that Kaoko was looking in the right area.

Last month, Midas reported an initial resource for its Otavi project of 10.5 million tonnes at 1.6% copper and 21 grams per tonne silver containing 169,000t of copper and 7.1 million ounces of silver, or 2% copper equivalent for 211,000t of CuEq.

“Otavi is definitely a bit more advanced,” O’Donovan said. “It’s got more drilling, but we’re giving ourselves a red-hot crack here by actually acquiring an asset which is a little bit advanced but is in the right spot.”

This week, Midas reported the best hit yet from Otavi of 50m at 5.55% copper and over 125g/t silver, or over 7.9% CuEq from 194m, including 16.3m at 12.99% copper and 360.2g/t silver, or 19.81% CuEq, from 214.7m.

“They’re some of the best copper results you’ll see in the world this year,” O’Donovan said.

Chalkos

As well as Otavi, Chalkos sits in the same geological setting as the historical Tsumeb mine, which is reported to have produced 1.7Mt of copper grading 4.3%.

The company already knows the project is mineralised.

“[The vendors] walked onto this 600m outcrop of high-grade copper, and they were like, ‘holy moly, we’ve probably found something here’,” O’Donovan said. 

At Donkey Hill, surface samples have graded up to 69.6% copper and 2030g/t silver.

“The reason it’s named Donkey Hill is because they did use donkeys to transport some bulk samples out of there to do some met work,” O’Donovan said. 

Further work discovered another prospect called Otniel, about 1.3km to the south, which returned 52.7% copper and 448g/t silver.

“We have a 700m of outcrop, then we’ve got 1.3km of a gap, and we’ve got a 300m outcrop and it’s up to us to figure out, do the dots join?” O’Donovan said. 

“Then there’s 40km more of prospectivity and 20km of mineralised strike to explore.”

Given the strong direct shipping ore market for copper in southern Africa, some metallurgical test work was previously completed on both prospects.

Leaching test work achieved up to 89% recovery from Otniel and up to 71.1% recovery from Donkey Hill.

Ore sorting test work was also conducted with a 308kg sample from Donkey Hill with a head grade of 9.9% upgraded to 13%, and a 308kg sample from Otniel with a head grade of 3% upgraded to 8.5%.

“The way we describe it to people is, well, they did the hard bit, they found it, then they skipped the middle bit, which is defining the quantum, and they went straight to the end to try and sell it,” O’Donovan said. 

“They did the met work and they got the right result there, so a lot of the time, people shy away from the met work because they feel it could be the acid touch that kills the project, whereas we’re sort of happy that that’s been done. 

“We can say to people, yes, we understand that it can recover somewhat, and it’s now down to the drill bit really, and defining how much we have.”

Karibib

The Karibib copper-gold-tungsten project, where the company can earn up to 85%, is in the Damara Belt, which also hosts the Navachab gold mine and Twin Hills gold project.

Rock chip samples have returned up to 28.4% copper, 453g/t silver and 26.3g/t gold. 

A 10-hole reverse circulation drilling program in 2022 returned 4m at 1.35% copper and 0.68g/t gold from 24m; and 4m at 1.98% copper, 0.92g/t gold and 0.72% tungsten from 9m. 

“It’s a bit of a sleeper, and it’s very easy access. It’s very easy to drill. We can do an RC program there quickly,” O’Donovan said. 

“We know where the historical drilling was done. It was only done to about 70m, so it wasn’t that deep, and we’ll run some field work and do a comprehensive soils campaign across that to define targets. 

“That’s not going to command a lot of capital. We can get in there and actually do some good exploration.”

Kaoko is planning to have drill rigs on the ground within two months, likely at Karibib first, followed by Chalkos once some access work is completed.

“The mineralisation at Chalkos is at surface,” O’Donovan said. “It’s staring us in the face, so it’s not very hard to get cracking and get moving, and we’ll do that.”