Haib project<\/a>, which we bought in May 2017. Four years later, in June 2021, the Minister of Mines and Minerals Development refused to renew our licence, stating that he was told that we don\u2019t do any work, so we don\u2019t deserve to have the project.<\/p>\nNaturally, we argued that we had five drills on-site, with 60 employees active. We had shipped one ton of samples to Australia for metallurgical test work; there was a lot of activity. There was a serious difference between the information he received and the information we communicated to the Ministry. Nevertheless, he decided to pull the plug on our licence.<\/p>\n
We immediately went to the High Court of Namibia, and requested an injunction over that area to prevent the ministry from granting a licence to anyone else. In doing this, we discovered another private company had applied for our licence six months prior to the expiry. This is very unusual.<\/p>\n
In Namibia, when you apply for an existing licence in general, the Ministry will state that the license is still valid and to come back later when it has expired.<\/p>\n
Our second step was to request the court to review the Minister\u2019s decision. The court case lasted a little over a year. We had the final hearing in October 2022.<\/p>\n
At the end of the same month, there was a big scandal that ran in the press in Namibia, first on social media and then through the traditional press. The scandal concerned allegations that were similar in nature to those experienced by Deep-South Resources. Potential issues surrounding license renewals were highlighted during this time and we were hopeful of a positive outcome.<\/p>\n
It was such an important scandal that we thought it was impossible the judge hadn\u2019t seen it. We were also in the fortunate position of having an injunction on the project. Thus, when the judge rendered a strong verdict in our favour, the licence was still available.<\/p>\n
It is not in the mandate of the court to order the Ministry to grant the licence, but he ordered them to reopen the application for renewal that was originally denied in 2021, this time considering all the facts presented by Deep-South.<\/p>\n
We wanted to defend ourselves to protect the interests of our shareholders. We finally got the licence back in July 2023, two years later. That situation has been seriously damaging; our market capitalisation has dropped by 80%.<\/p>\n
We did not get any compensation from the Ministry. If we want compensation, we have to institute a new court case where we will request damage, but on the other hand, we want to keep a good relationship with the Ministry, so we will avoid legal disputes.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s been our biggest challenge, not only for us, but for the numerous high-level Namibians who were really annoyed by this scandal and expressed their discomfort with the situation. At the end of the day, the rule of law prevailed and we are now back on track to continue our exciting progress in Namibia.<\/p>\n
We also have had smaller challenges, but it is part of our business. As an example, we\u2019re owed a lot of money from the value-added tax, but it takes an awful lot of time to be reimbursed. At some point, they tried to change the rules to not pay back exploration companies, but now it seems to be back on track.<\/p>\n
We spent over a year awaiting a payment of around $135,000, which is a lot of money for a small exploration company. We also have issues from time to time, with work visas for foreign employees. The procedure is long and complex compared to Zambia. It\u2019s more administrative stuff that sometimes makes our life a bit difficult. But we always resolve these things.<\/p>\n
So what\u2019s next for Deep South Resources?<\/h3>\n Quite a lot! We just closed the financing. So even if the market is very difficult at the moment for small companies, we just closed a financing of $2m, and we\u2019re pretty happy because three institutions have taken $1.5m of the financing. They\u2019re very good supporters. With this funding in place, we are resuming the drilling programme that was suspended on the Haib copper project, as well as restarting the feasibility study procedures.<\/p>\n
At the completion of the drilling programme, we will also have a new resource estimation somewhere in early 2024. We just announced that we have appointed the MSA group in South Africa to complete this resource estimation.<\/p>\n
We are also looking at appointing an engineering firm for the environmental impact study that goes with the feasibility study. We\u2019re working on receiving proposals now from engineering firms for the feasibility study.<\/p>\n
We are resuming our activities with METS Engineering in Australia and CSIRO, the governmental laboratory in Australia, for metallurgical test work, heap leaching and other tests. All of this will be announced during the next month, which means that by the end of October, we will be in full swing with the resumption of our activities.<\/p>\n
At the same time, in Zambia, we are starting a small programme of geophysical-induced polarisation surveys on the Luanshya West project. We have generated some very interesting soil sampling results recently, and we want to better define the drilling targets for next year. We will be very busy. Stay tuned because there\u2019s a lot of activity coming. We\u2019re pretty excited about these developments and exploration programmes.<\/p>\n
After the two years we spent fighting for the company, we look forward to a very good year coming up in the copper exploration field.<\/p>\n
Please note, this article will also appear in the sixteenth edition of our\u00a0quarterly publication<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Deep South Resources is back to upgrading its copper exploration game in Southern Africa. Read more about their work here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":38338,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24502],"tags":[529,24524,24532,24527],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Deep South Resources is back in business in copper exploration<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n