Dispatch from Namibia: Part 2, August 2026
Our Dear Leader, having seen a mix of commodities with Arkle and Andrada in Part 1, has now moved on to the "gold and copper" leg of the trip. On the Friday, he joined Ongwe Minerals at Nguni, where the company is currently drilling for gold; the site felt like the middle of nowhere, but with a huge amount of exploration acreage to match. Ongwe is in many ways a truly Namibian company, founded by two young Namibian geologists from Swakopmund, Carl Joone and Harmen Potgieter. Heye Daun (of Andrew’s final stop Koryx Copper) also sits on the board as a director and major shareholder; Namibian-born himself, he has been a serial and successful mining entrepreneur, building numerous companies in the country and selling them.
In addition to the well-known copper mines like Tsumeb and Kombat, the Damara Belt also hosts significant gold production at mines like Otjikoto and Navachab which has encouraged exploration. It's still early days for Ongwe, but having recently closed a C$23mn financing, the company is well capitalised for a lot more drilling and exploration work. Andrew feels it will almost certainly follow the path of gold developer WIA Gold on the ASX, currently valued at around A$850m, about ten times Ongwe's size, the shares of which have risen over 1,200% in the last five years and roughly 350% in the last two.
Ongwe's three projects, Outjo, Omatjete and Khorixas, all sit within the Northern Zone of the Damara Orogenic Belt. Much of central and northern Namibia is masked by thick calcrete and alluvial cover that mutes or entirely distorts the surface geochemistry explorers normally rely on, and seeing through it is arguably the single biggest edge Ongwe has. It is very much Dave Underwood's own methodology: as the technical lead behind Osino's Twin Hills discovery, he found a greenfields deposit of more than three million ounces hidden under exactly this kind of calcrete cover.
Omatjete is the flagship, a dominant 1,440km² contiguous land position along the deep-seated Okondeka Fault Zone, just 30km west of the 2.9moz Kokoseb Gold Deposit grading 1g/t. The site Andrew actually visited was Nguni, a brand-new discovery, located 17km east of Manga and 55km east of Kokoseb along the same fault system. A 5,000m drill programme is now underway, which is what Andrew saw.
The largest of the three by area is the 1,690km² Khorixas Gold Project, running along a northwest trending arm of the same Northern Zone and still very lightly explored. Here, eighteen gold-in-calcrete targets have been found beneath ground previously inaccessible under alluvial cover.
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Ongwe drill rig | Drill samples |
On Saturday, Andrew was allowed a day off and chose to spend it playing golf at Rossmund Golf Club, just outside Swakopmund in the desert. The club was originally built by Rio Tinto during its ownership of the Rössing uranium mine, now in Chinese hands, and back then was a rather "British" affair, complete with strict dress code and etiquette; today membership has fallen considerably, and the atmosphere is far more casual. Many of the members Andrew met had worked at Rössing, and as always, he used his round to gather local gossip: the general view was that the Chinese were not especially popular, seen as keeping to themselves and giving little back to the community, though everyone remains hopeful that the current mining boom, along with a possible oil boom south of Walvis Bay, will give the economy a real lift. Andrew even played in the weekly medal competition, though we never did hear his score; he did admit it wasn't easy playing with some rather tired rental clubs in the desert. Although unhappy with his clubs this did make it safer for the springbok in the middle of the green!
Andrew then flew back to Johannesburg to see West Wits Mining, and as it turns out, the quickest way to reach Koryx Copper in the very south of Namibia is also via Johannesburg. While there, he had dinner with James Campbell, Managing Director of Botswana Minerals (BMIN LN), a copper exploration play in northwest Botswana and a recent client addition for VSA [click here for our initiation note].
Botswana Minerals, formerly Botswana Diamonds, pivoted toward copper following the decline of the diamond market, and has since acquired multiple licences in Botswana. That ground sits where the Damara Belt effectively continues from Namibia toward Zambia's Copperbelt. Where the company has been clever is in adopting an AI strategy, using it to process vast amounts of historical exploration data to quickly and efficiently choose licences and target its drilling.
The Damara Belt
On Monday, Andrew visited West Wits Mining, located just fifteen minutes from Johannesburg's CBD and so very easy to reach (if this were London, fifteen minutes from the City would only get you as far as King's Cross!). This is a proven area, part of the Witwatersrand Basin, and their project is the Qala Shallows underground mine; Andrew duly put on his underground safety kit and went in to inspect.
A few things impressed him, in particular the classic South African approach of getting production going quickly so that early cash flow pays for infrastructure spending, which in turn funds further growth and ramp up. West Wits holds a JORC resource of 7.24mnoz of gold at a very significant 4g/t Au. The company is working on Project 200 which could make it a genuinely significant producer, something Andrew feels is not being appreciated at the current share price and a market cap of only around A$160m. There also appear to be opportunities for deals with neighbouring sites that could be highly accretive.
WWI is also adopting new technologies, something we are seeing across the whole mining space, but one innovation that particularly caught Andrew's interest was sensors fitted to mining lamps that trucks can detect, automatically stopping if they come too close to prevent an accident. As regular readers will know, Andrew is a strong supporter of airport airside automation and thinks aircraft should carry similar sensors to interact with airside vehicles and prevent collisions. The global cost of aircraft ground damage currently runs at around US$5bn a year and is expected to nearly double to US$10bn by 2035 without intervention, so surely worth eliminating.
South African politics does tend to put off international investors, despite the quality of the assets and the cash flow on offer, but the sense is that, slowly, politics is changing as people recognise how difficult it is to resolve the country's challenges without international investment. Andrew doesn't hold a strong view on South African politics himself, but can see how reshaping the way BEE operates, more along the lines of a traditional sovereign wealth fund, would be a significant step forward, and would very likely end up more beneficial for the country as a whole.
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Qala Shallows Mining Operation
On the Tuesday, Andrew was back on his travels, heading back to Namibia to see his final company, Koryx Copper; a Canadian TSX-V listed PEA stage copper development company. He flew from Johannesburg to Upington, hired a car (at a rather steep extra fee for crossing the border), and drove on into southern Namibia. At the South African border, four different officers and four stamps later, he thought he was through, only to find the actual Namibian border a few kilometres on, where six more officers and six more stamps made for an hour-long ordeal.
Andrew’s driving route from Upington to see Koryx Copper
The lesson, once again, was that his e-visa was for endurance rather than electronic; officials didn't like that he had flown into Namibia earlier in the trip, left by plane, and was now trying to re-enter by rental car. After thirty minutes of explaining himself, a more senior officer arrived and waved him through. Andrew's advice: if you're not Namibian, don't try to drive across this particular border. He later learned that because Noordoewer, where he was staying, sits right on the border further along, some people simply leave their car at the crossing, walk across, and get picked up on the other side by Koryx staff. A cold beer soon put things right.
It did remind him though that this area of Namibia is quite remote and very few people come this way and maybe explains why so little exploration has taken place. Furthermore, a huge swathe of southwestern Namibia, was locked up as the "Sperrgebiet," or "forbidden zone," from the German colonial era onward, controlled first by CDM and later by Namdeb and De Beers as an exclusive diamond concession. Although the Sperrgebeit has limited exploration in Southern Namibia, that area is closer to the coast than where Haib was discovered. The project has been known since 1900 and several majors have drilled it previously, Falconbridge in the 1960s Rio in the 70s and Teck after that. There is no question of doubt that this is a huge copper porphyry but averaging 0.3% this was too low for the twentieth century miners.
Koryx is now led by Heye Daun as President and CEO. He co-founded Auryx Gold making the Otjikoto discovery which was sold to B2Gold for US$160m in 2011, then co-founded Osino Resources which discovered Twin Hills that was then sold to Shanjin International Gold for roughly C$368m in 2024. Of course, Heye is a Director of Ongwe but he is running Koryx with his business partner Alan Friedman. Two exits, both built and sold inside Namibia, is a standout track record in the junior space and Namibia.
At around 1.9 billion years old, Haib is one of the oldest porphyry copper systems ever identified, and one of only two known in the Richtersveld Magmatic Arc (the other, Lorelei, sits inside Ai-Ais National Park, 120km northwest, which makes it far harder to permit).
The terrain for Koryx Copper is very different to his previous Namibian site visits as it was in a “mountainous” area and a 4x4 essential. Andrew drove to see numerous drill rigs as currently they have 15 drilling and seven on a 24hr shift. This will, however, pause in a few days’ time as the deadline for results for the upcoming PFS will be hit. It is deemed a low-grade mine, but the sheer size means that it can be economic and with modern technology and better planning combined with a higher copper price can make this an outstanding copper mine. Water again is not an issue as the Haib River system runs close by before it feeds into the Orange River, which Andrew can testify is plentiful as he did walk to it as part of his DD.
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Koryx Copper Haib Project
When Koryx took on the project, it dropped the old heap bioleach plan for conventional milling and flotation, a switch that materially improved the economics. The updated 2025 PEA outlines production of around 92,000 tonnes of copper a year over the first decade (88,000t/y average across a 23 year mine life), an after tax NPV of US$1.35bn and a 20% IRR. The standout is Target Zone 3, where the widest and highest-grade intercepts start at or near surface in steeply dipping breccias. Molybdenum grades are low near surface but rise at depth, adding a potential by-product stream as drilling goes deeper.
Andrew left Koryx knowing that a copper mine will be built but the questions on which he needs to ponder are who will build it and can the construction cost be reduced from an estimated US$1.5bn. He is not worried about the actual size of the resource as whether it is 1.3, 1.5 or even 2bn tonnes, it will have a very long mine life. There are not many copper mines globally of this scale and so Andrew suspects that a major or maybe the Chinese will be knocking on the door soon and shareholders will be very happy.
Andrew had a much more relaxed drive back to Upington to catch his flight to Jo‘Burg and he did make a small diversion to see the Fish River Canyon which is the second largest in the World after the Grand Canyon. He also noticed a lot of vineyards, sadly for eating rather than wine. He does hear rumours though that 2026 is expected to be an incredible year for wine from this part of the world.
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The Orange River and Fish River Canyon
Andrew has found this trip just as useful for spotting good investment opportunities as he did in Mexico last summer. Buying all four of last year's Mexican miners twelve months ago would have delivered an average return of around 59% (Avino Silver +75%, Sierra Madre Gold & Silver +90%, Guanajuato Silver +103%, Luca Mining -31%), a genuinely useful real-world test of the value of these trips. Andrew believes buying all the companies on this trip is likely to deliver similarly strong returns over the next six months, particularly as he remains convinced that we are in a super bull market for commodities. That said, he's also a believer that the surest route to a 100 bagger isn't holding one stock all the way there, it's buying a ten-bagger, selling it, and reinvesting into another ten bagger. Buy low, sell high, and repeat.
Andrew’s next destination is likely to be Budapest where he is attending a new Eastern European conference, founded by Snow Leopard Capital in partnership with Ocean Partners. He believes this could be very interesting for companies looking for a conference outside the well-trodden path with new pools of capital. If any companies are interested, please do get in touch.
Finally, Andrew genuinely enjoys visiting mining projects and getting to understand the countries they sit in, so he's always looking for the next trip and challenge. He firmly believes a site visit beats hands down a twenty-minute presentation heard for the twentieth time that day; a visit brings things to life in a way no slide deck can. We've been hearing him talk about Chile in the office lately, copper and lithium in particular, so perhaps that's next…as always, watch this space for the latest news…
