You have to admire the irrepressible optimism of Ireland’s exploration sector. Besieged by operational and strategic setbacks and challenges, they never fail to find a bright spot on the horizon.
Whether they ever reach the promised land of profitability or not is another question.
Botswana Minerals reported results for the second half of last year on Monday. The bad news: more losses, though the company took comfort from tight cost control that limited these to £215,000 (€249,000) in the period.
The results quaintly describe the company as “pre-revenue”, though elsewhere in the release you discover that it has spent over two decades assembling “an extensive geoscientific data set covering approximately 95,000sq km” of the southern African country. The investors are, presumably, a patient lot.
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Botswana’s board, we are told, has “consistently stated that diamonds remain central to the company’s identity.” Maybe so, but that didn’t stop the company dropping the word “diamonds” from its name earlier this month to reflect a switch in its focus to exploring for copper deposits.
Weakness in the market for natural diamonds amid the stratospheric rise in supply (and demand) for cheaper lab grown diamonds has put paid, for now, to Botswana’s pursuit of the gems, although it does reassure investors that it is “retaining its core diamond assets for future value realisation”.
If there is value to realise, that is. Botswana’s model is to identify promising targets before seeking partners to help fund drilling programmes. Finding partners to drill for diamonds in the foreseeable future might be a reach.
The good news is that there is definitely demand for copper and that’s where Botswana has now decided to invest its cash.
[ Botswana Diamonds says AI investigation yields ‘spectacular result’Opens in new window ]
To that end, it trumpets the award to the company of eight prospecting licences in northwest Botswana, on the back of what the group said was its artificial intelligence driven analysis (of course) of one of the largest private exploration databases in the country.
“The objective over the next 24 months is clear: build and test copper and polymetal targets through phased work programmes, minimise dilution through farm-in structures, and preserve optionality across the portfolio,” the company said, insisting Botswana is a country that “remains underexplored for base metals relative to its geological potential”. Hopefully, those investors’ patience holds out.
