Project - Klein Aub
The Klein Aub Project - Nambia
In November 2025, Unicorn Mineral Resources signed heads of terms to acquire the Klein Aub Project in Namibia. Klein Aub is an historic Cu/Ag mine located within the highly prospective Kalahari Copper Belt. Mining commenced in 1966 and was closed in 1986, leaving a large tailings dam that Unicorn is seeking to reprocess. The deposit is located within the highly prospective Kalahari Copper Belt. Potential exists for reopening and developing primary ore in the historic mine, reprocessing the tailings / slimes dumps on surface and assessing the development of out-cropping copper mineralisation along strike from the old workings.
The Klein Aub project area comprises two Exclusive Prospecting Licences (EPL), which are EPL 5851 and EPL 7958. The two EPLs cover a combined 65.4 km2 and are situated in the Rehoboth Rural constituency in the Hardap Region of central Namibia. The project area is located roughly 80 km southeast of the town of Rehoboth and 180 km south of Windhoek. The area is at the junction of the unpaved roads C14 and D1290.
The historic mine site, tailings, and Klein Aub Village is within the EPL 5851 right. The EPL falls under commercial and communal lands.
Klein Aub is situated on the south-western extremity of the Kalahari Copper belt and is part of the last formation of an 11 km thick volcano-sedimentary succession. The Kalahari Copperbelt is a NE-trending Meso- to Neoproterozoic belt extending discontinuously for 1,000 km from western Namibia to northern Botswana. The belt is approximately 250 km wide and is situated along the NW edge of the Kalahari Craton. The belt outcrops mainly as the Middle Proterozoic Sinclair Sequence and equivalent lithologies and is characterised by multiple stratabound Cu-Ag deposits stretching discontinuously from central Namibia to northern Botswana. Mineralisation is typically hosted in Meso- to Neoproterozoic metasedimentary rocks that have experienced folding and greenschist facies metamorphism during the Pan-African Damara Orogeny.
The Klein Aub, Witvlei, Dordabis and Oamites stratabound, sediment hosted, copper-silver deposits are considered to define the nature of the Kalahari Copperbelt, where an estimated 8 million tonnes of copper has been discovered to date. The mineralisation at Klein Aub is stratabound, hosted in dolomitic marble and quartzite, and with ore consisting mainly of chalcopyrite, bornite, and chalcocite. The deposit occurs along a faulted contact zone trending northeast–southwest and dipping steeply northwest.
Three orebodies were mined during the 21 years that the mine was in operation up to 1987, and 5.5 million tons of ore were produced. The average ore grade was 2.0% Cu and 50.0g/t Ag. During operation the total mineable reserves were estimated to be 7.5 million tons and, therefore, it is inferred that roughly 2 million tons of ore remain in-situ.
Drilling and assay work completed since 2020 indicate a potential deposit of 5,587,000 tonnes of ore contained in the historic tailings and slimes dam. Of this, 5,500,000 tonnes are contained in tailings dam, with an estimated grade of 0.26% Cu and 7.4g/t Ag, and 87,000t in the slimes dam, with an estimated grade of 1.34% Cu and 33.55g/t Ag. Together these provide for a potential total in situ metal content of up to 15,460 tonnes of copper and 1.4 million ounces of silver. In addition, there is the potential for several unmined parallel lodes extending along strike to the northeast.
The metallurgy of the slimes and tailings is complex, with high concentrations of carbonates that render any acid leaching uneconomic. The Company is investigating the use of glycine to extract the copper and is working with Draslovka, a world leader in environmentally friendly glycine leaching technology (GLT: Draslovka’s Innovative Metal Extraction Process) to maximise the potential recovery value.
Preliminary test results for the levels of copper recovery support the Company’s confidence in the project’s economic viability. Work is still to be carried out to investigate the potential to extract the silver, which could further enhance the economics of the project.
