Global crisis delays Maun copper project

Speaking at the Australia Day mining conference in London on Monday, Managing Director Brad Sampson said the timeline for the approximately $200 million project is to be extended because of the economic downturn.

'The firm is revising a feasibility study after metals markets and share markets tumbled,' Sampson said. 'We think there may be some value in slowing down a little bit.'The Botswana, Australia and London-listed firm had been hoping to commission its Maun-based Boseto project, which has a resource of 50 million tonnes of ore at 1.3 percent copper, in late 2010.'But with costs sliding, it might be worth extending the timeline of the project,' Reuters quoted Sampson as saying.A preliminary feasibility study earlier this year pegged capital costs at $185 million and unit cash costs at $1.43 per pound for an operation producing 23,500 tonnes of copper per year.

'Since then, not only has the copper price fallen, but key input costs have fallen quite dramatically as well,' he said. Shipping costs are down 80 percent and oil prices are off by more than half. Discovery had planned to produce a 42 percent concentrate to be shipped from neighbouring Namibia or South Africa. Because southern Africa is in the midst of a power crisis, the firm plans to generate its own power for the first 12 months of the operation.

Sampson said a slowing down of the project would also allow the firm to expand its resource base. The firm has 10,100 square kilometres of prospecting licences in an area that is a little-explored extension of the central African copper belt in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.Discovery has A$8.6 million ($5.5 million) of cash, which is enough to last through the middle of next year when a final feasibility study is due to be completed, Sampson said.

News of Discovery's timeline extension comes at a time when the company has just announced the results of a recent soil geochemistry programme conducted along the south west strike extension of the Petra prospect at the Boseto Copper Project in it identified a new 3.6-kilometre long surface copper anomaly immediately south west of the current Petra prospect.

Said Sampson after the announcement that was made in Australia: 'The soil geochemistry programme at Boseto has delivered extensive strike lengths for follow up drilling at Quirinus, and now Petra.

This reinforces our ability to deliver significant exploration outcomes at minimal costs and highlights the exceptional prospectivity of our tenements. 'In respect of the Petra prospect, it should be noted that prior to obtaining these results, the Petra prospect was considered to be the smallest of the copper resources included in the Boseto Project evaluation. However, these new results indicate that we have probably discovered a significant extension to the Petra prospect.

'Petra now has the potential to contribute to a significant increase in the total mineral resource base of the Boseto Project once the silver credits, a north east strike extension and the possible south west strike extension are considered.'