Kavango Story20 Jun 2021 13:19
Posted by skiboy on advfn:
"27th May 2021
KAVANGO RESOURCES – BENEATH THE SAND
For Michael Foster, the Kavango Resources story begins when he was approached by a couple of friends, he had worked with 20 years ago for another mining company. What started as an idea shared by two scientists is turning into an exciting mining prospect.
“They came to me in 2017. They had spent a lot of their own money on this project in Botswana looking for copper, nickel, and platinum group metals,” explains Foster, now the CEO of Kavango Resources. “It was a very large project. They had licenses to carry out prospecting and had spent $1.5 million of their own money researching the site. It had got to the stage they needed to raise money in the public market, so they came to me in London and I looked at it and we did an independent evaluation.”
The company was listed in 2018. Foster worked with the company founders to put together a team of people and raise the necessary capital, making excellent progress.
“Botswana is probably the easiest country in Africa to operate in. The area we’re in is in Western Botswana. You can get there easily and it’s politically stable,” Foster says. “There’s potentially a lot of mineral deposits in the area, such as copper and nickel, buried that haven’t been discovered. Having done all of that carefully and systematically, this year we have funding to do some drilling. So at that stage, almost three years from listing, we are getting to the point of discovering if this is real or not.”
Raising money is a challenge for any mining project, especially given the cyclical nature of the industry.
“When there’s a low, raising money is more difficult,” explains Foster. “From 2012 to 2018 was a tough time for the mineral exploration industry, but fortunately we have the skills and you can always raise money for good projects.”
Skin in the Game
That the project is based in Botswana is a big plus- while there are countries investors and mining companies might avoid as a risk-factor, Botswana is politically stable with strong infrastructure. The location is only half the equation, however.
“Our other big selling point is obviously our people. We have a good complimentary skill base of geologists, geophysicists, and corporate people,” explains Foster. “A good combination like that is critical in a small company, particularly when it comes to managing risk.”
Of course, the first job is finding those people. Fortunately, as Foster points out, the mineral exploration industry is a small world, especially in Africa.
“The two founders and I have been in the industry for over 90 years combined. So between us, we know people from networking and conferences,” Foster says. “We were set up by a geologist and a geophysicist, which is a good base to start from in terms of skills.”
While the connections of Foster and the company’s founders are valuable, they also believe strongly in drawing from local talent pools.
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