24 July 2026
Vantage Metals (ASX:VAN) has commenced drilling at its 100%-owned Kalahari Copper Project in northwestern Botswana.
The company has mobilised a rig to complete 5,000–10,000m of diamond drilling across sedimentary-hosted copper targets. The initial campaign marks the first programme in the northeastern portion of the tenure and is expected to run until at least October 2026.
Vantage has refined three priority target areas using aeromagnetic interpretation and airborne electromagnetic inversion. Drilling will combine non-recovery tricone drilling through desert sand overburden with diamond tails to maximise efficiency.
CEO Will Dix says commencing initial drilling in the northern area of the project is ‘exciting’.
“We are looking forward to working with Rots Drilling and its affiliate Major Drilling to maximise our productivity and identify the copper hosting sequences across the project as quickly as possible,” Dix says.
“The targets continue to be refined and the geology better understood with each iteration of the geophysics, and we are looking forward to adding both three-dimensional geology and surface geochemistry to the geological model.”
The programme will follow a ‘dynamic’ approach to enable rapid focus changes based on individual drill hole results. Vantage initially aims to locate and orient the Ngwako Pan–D’Kar contact — the key geological contact for copper mineralisation in the Kalahari Copper Belt — before using airborne geophysics to follow the contact position along strike.
To streamline decision-making, all geological, structural, and basic geotechnical logging will occur at the drill rig, with core photography, cutting, and sampling as the only off-rig activities.
Vantage says exploration throughout 2026 remains focused exclusively on tenure along strike from MMG’s (HKG:1208) Khoemacau copper production hub. Its 3,900km² Kalahari Project is located east and south of Maun.
Vantage Metals is a mineral explorer focused on mining and developing critical metals, specifically copper, gold, and zinc.
Source: https://mining.com.au/vantage-begins-drilling-at-botswana-copper-project/
