African Copper to go ahead at Dukwe (October 23, 2006)

African Copper (ACU-T, AFNCF-O, ACU-L) will start construction of a mine at the Dukwe copper project in Botswana, with the hope of starting production in 2008.

The company’s board approved the production decision and the company has applied to the Botswanan government for a mining licence, which it expects to have in hand soon. There is already a water extraction permit and Botswana’s Department of Environmental Affairs has issued final comments on the project’s impact assessment and management plan.

Resource estimates by two independent consultants, RSG Global and Caracle Creek International Consultants, are being calculated; previous estimates had calculated separate oxide and sulphide resources at Dukwe, but mine plans had generally considered only sulphide material. Metallurgical tests on the oxide mineralization (which is partly supergene-enriched) are under way.

The mill at Dukwe will be designed to take 3,000 tonnes of ore per day, producing about 20,000 tonnes copper annually.

A data verification program by consulting firm RSG Global has largely confirmed earlier drill data, while showing some indications that earlier resource figures underestimated grades.

The property had seen several drill programs between 1962 and the present, some of which used diamond core drilling, some reverse-circulation, and some percussion drilling. The verification program twinned 10 historical holes with new core holes.

Earlier resource estimates had disregarded the oldest drill programs from 1962 to 1973. Some of these earlier holes were plagued by poor core recovery and results of the new twin holes showed significantly higher grades, including a 24.4-metre section that graded 2.27% copper, which on re-drilling returned 4.02% copper over 21.4 metres, and a 16-metre section that graded 0.77%, corresponding to a re-drilled 15.4 metres grading 2.71%.

RSG’s opinion was that part of the old drilling database could be used for a resource estimate, and that is being integrated with the 38,000-metre drill program African Copper completed in March. The two resource estimates by RSG and Caracle Creek should be complete later in the year.