Canadian copper development company, Koryx Copper, has announced its 2025 exploration and project development strategy for its wholly-owned, advanced-stage, large-scale and long-life open-pit Haib Copper Project in southern Namibia.
This 2025 technical strategy comprises an intensive drill and study programme, including more than 55 000m of growth and quality improvement drilling, aiming to increase the size and grade of the Haib Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) as well as multiple technical, environmental and metallurgical studies. This program will result in an updated Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) and Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS) for Haib, both to be published before the end of 2025.
This fast-tracked technical strategy of drilling, study, infrastructure and permitting activities represents a major step-change in the development of Haib and is geared towards the rapid development of the Project to the bankability stage, with major permitting and all technical studies to be concluded by the end of 2026.
Heye Daun, Koryx Copper’s CEO commented: "We are very excited to have ended 2024 with a strong treasury of more than C$17 million in cash, no liabilities and a clean share structure. With new leadership and a top-tier technical team in place, we have hit the ground running and spent the latter part of 2024 preparing for and planning this transformative work program, which is already underway at Haib.
As part of the 2025 work program, we are planning to 1) execute the largest drill program at Haib since its discovery, aiming to improve the grade and size of the mineral resource whilst 2) proving the economic feasibility of a much larger conventional flotation concentrate process as well as subsequent heap leaching for the lower grade material.
This work program will for the first time bring together all of the quality work that was completed historically and combine it with the updated and much more detailed work which Koryx is carrying out this year, thereby delivering an integrated Haib project approach with much larger planned copper production than was contemplated historically. Under this scope Haib will produce both clean copper concentrate and refined copper cathodes. Right-sizing and optimizing the Haib Project is what our 2025 work program will achieve.
Owing to its low altitude (500m amsl), its proximity to world-class infrastructure, and the very favorable permitting and mining-friendly jurisdiction of Namibia, Haib has the genuine potential to become a high quality, low-risk global copper development project. Given our track record of execution and value creation in mining in Namibia, in addition to our blue-chip shareholder base, we believe we are perfectly placed to achieve this during 2025 and beyond.”
The updated PEA is designed to replace the outdated historical PEA from 2021 and to describe the scope of the new Haib project, thereby serving as the basis for the mine permitting process (described further down). This is to be followed up with a Definitive Feasibility Study (“DFS”) planned to be published before the end of 2026.
2025 Planning Objectives for Haib
Koryx’s vision is to turn Haib into Namibia’s next major mine development. This will require high-class leadership, drive, innovation and technical expertise, coupled with significant funding. To achieve this, the Company is aiming to fulfil the following key objectives during 2025:
- Reinforcing the team and establishing the infrastructure to execute a large-scale, multi-year drilling and technical study program. The program will be completed by multiple local and international service providers and overseen by Koryx’ own team of competent professionals, aiming to right-size (grow) and optimize (improve quality) Haib and to fast-track the completion of a PFS by the end of 2025, followed by the completion of a DFS and mine permitting before the end of 2026.
- Significantly improve the quality of the MRE by increasing the mineral resource size and copper equivalent grade.
- Proving the techno-economic feasibility of a conventional flotation concentrate process flow sheet for the higher grade material, in parallel with an innovative leaching process for the lower grade material.
- This includes integrating the mine plan with the two parallel process flow sheets to maximize value (LOM, NPV, annual copper production rate).
- De-risking and advancing the environmental and mine permitting, infrastructure, utilities and project delivery aspects of the Project.
Led by a highly competent and experienced team who have worked together on Namibian projects for many years, with a strong track record of execution and value creation, the Koryx team is perfectly placed to successfully execute on these objectives.
2025 Development Study Approach
The PEA will describe an integrated and enhanced process flowsheet for Haib, comprising flotation and concentrate production for the higher-grade ROM material, and a hydrometallurgical process including heap leaching and solvent extraction / electrowinning (SX/EW) for the lower grade ROM material.
As a part of the PEA, Koryx will evaluate alternative metallurgical process flow sheets and carry out infrastructure related trade-off studies. The Company is confident that a high degree of confidence can be ascribed to the trade-off studies as the input data will be based on actual test results and/or benchmarked data from similar projects.
The PEA will be followed up immediately by a PFS, aiming to right-size and optimize the project definition so that the team can focus on engineering the unit processes and infrastructure requirements which would generate the optimal economic outcomes for Haib.
A key aspect of the 2025 PEA is right-sizing the operation to optimise the life-of-mine (multi decade) whilst maximizing copper production. Koryx is evaluating a processing plant throughput operating range of 15 to 25mtpa crushed material (run-of-mine). Applying industry average copper recovery factors, the project could produce 50 – 100ktpa of copper (combination of copper contained in concentrate and refined copper cathode) over a life of mine of 15 – 30 years.
In developing a credible project implementation plan, Koryx will consider a staged implementation model wherein the conventional comminution and flotation processing facilities will be constructed and operated as Stage 1, followed by construction and operation of the leaching and hydrometallurgical facilities in Stage 2.
Phase 2 Drilling (Q1 2025) and Mineral Resource Planning for 2025
During 2024 the Company completed a small (3,500m), but highly successful Phase 1 drill program at Haib. The program specifically targeted higher grade, more structurally controlled areas of the Haib mineralisation with inclined drilling, which are not typical for a porphyry-type of deposit, and which had been missed by Rio Tinto’s prior vertical drilling. These areas were previously identified by Koryx geologists through extensive fieldwork campaigns and were successfully traced through the 2024 Phase 1 drill program.
This 2024 drilling culminated in the publication of a new MRE for Haib, reflecting a 13% increase in Cu grade (from 0.31 to 0.35% Cu, refer to the press release dated September 10, 2024), and was immediately followed up with a larger Phase 2 drill program.
The objectives of the Phase 2 program are as follows:
- Extending and further targeting the structurally controlled, higher grade mineralisation which was identified and drilled during the 2024 Phase 1 drill program .
- Drilling and assaying for by-products, specifically molybdenum and gold, which both have the potential to be recovered in the updated mineral processing flowsheet now envisaged for Haib. The aim is to generate a sufficient sample density to be able to reflect the byproducts in the next MRE update, thereby assisting in further improving the Haib Cu equivalent grade instead of reporting just a pure Cu grade for the Haib mineralisation, as was done previously.
- Refining the geological model wireframes and improving the resolution of waste, low grade and high grade interfaces through in-fill drilling of the current 150m x 150m drill grid.
The figures below show the planned drilling for Phase 2, 3 & 4. Phase 3 drilling is expected to be completed at half year and Phase 4 drilling by the end of 2025.
The increase in planned drill metres has resulted in 3 additional rigs being mobilised to site in Q1 2025 and the Company expects to have 5 of the 6 rigs planned on site by the end of February 2025, with at least 3 of them on double shift operations, aiming to maximize drilling rates to achieve the targeted PEA and PFS publication dates from mid and late 2025 respectively.
A further 20,000m of Phase 4 infill drilling (reducing average drill spacing from 150m down to 75m) will be required to convert at least 80% of the mineral resource to the “Indicated” category. This drilling is expected to be completed during Q3 of 2025, thereby allowing for inclusion into the planned PFS to be published at the end of 2025. This will likely also fulfil the minimum confidence level required for the follow-on DFS study to be published at the end of 2026, although a significant quantum of additional infill and expansion drilling will likely be completed before then.
Planning for the follow-on Phase 3 drill program (29,000m) has been completed and drilling will commence immediately after the completion of the Phase 2 program late in Q1 2025. This drilling has been planned to further extend the higher grade areas (10,000m) plus infill and mineral resource extension drilling (19,000m).
Phase 3 and 4 Drilling (Q2 and Q3 2025)
The Phase 2 drill program which commenced in November 2024 comprises 8,200m of which 3,550m was completed by the end of 2024. The complete program is due to be completed during Q1 2025 with assay results to be reported throughout Q1 2025.
