Launching the next stage of Pambili’s Zimbabwe growth strategy
With a new mine and a new strategic partner, we’re confident in our strategy and ready to expand at full pace
CALGARY, Canada (Dec. 1, 2023)—This year has been a very busy one for Pambili.
The Company has crossed a number of critical milestones, culminating in its acquisition of the Golden Valley gold project in Zimbabwe last week.
The team is now more confident in its strategy than ever and is ready to expand at full pace.
With the close financial and logistical support of Kavango Resources Plc (Kavango), which is also keen to explore Zimbabwe’s gold potential, Pambili is launching the next stage of its growth strategy.
With this in mind, Pambili is taking the opportunity to bring everyone up to speed and keep investors in the know by relaunching its Paydirt newsletter. After all, it expects to deliver news from the ground at an increasingly rapid pace from here.
In this instalment, we look at how Pambili reached its latest acquisition and where it plans to go from here.
Proof of concept
The first major milestone Pambili crossed this year came in March with the publication of an updated NI 43-101 Technical Report on the Happy Valley mine. This was based on the results of the company’s drilling campaign, which ended last year.
Through drilling, Pambili confirmed that the project has the potential for hosting additional, economic ore bodies at depth. It also verified an inferred gold resource.
These results suggest considerable potential upside at the project itself.
Perhaps more excitingly, however, is that they validate Pambili’s plans to consolidate a portfolio of producing gold mines in Zimbabwe that haven’t yet had their full potential realized.
Specifically, the results offer proof of concept for two of the Company’s key strategic beliefs:
That many small-scale gold mines in Zimbabwe are not operating at their full potential due to a lack of capital investment and/or mineral resource estimates; and
That entering such projects can offer a rapid route to cashflow as existing/historical production reduces geological/construction risk and removes the need for expensive and time-consuming feasibility studies.
This alone is excellent. If done properly, the strategy could be a recipe for significant value creation.
But the reality is, actioning these plans also requires identifying and systematically acquiring projects that currently lack the capital and mineral resource estimates required to be properly developed.
That brings us to Pambili’s second key milestone: the appointment of Steve Smith as a technical consultant in April.
Opportunity pipeline
In a career spanning some 38 years, Steve has been involved in all aspects of the discovery and exploitation of economic mineral deposits.
Steve Smith, Technical Consultant, Pambili
This includes grassroots exploration and definition drilling all the way through to feasibility, underground mining/quarrying, and even mine closure environmental rehabilitation.
Moreover, Steve has spent the past 20 years working on and assessing mineral deposits in Zimbabwe itself – first as Assistant VP Exploration for Clarity Capital then as an independent consultant.
Pambili’s CEO Jon Harris previously stated that Steve has detailed knowledge of more Zimbabwe gold mines than anyone else he knows. And it’s this knowledge that has enabled Steve to provide Pambili with an enviable pipeline of projects.
After a systematic review of these opportunites, the Company reduced this pipeline to a shortlist of those that best fit its strategy. And this, reader, is what enabled Pambili to cross its third key 2023 milestone earlier this month – the acquisition of the Golden Valley project.
Exploring Golden Valley
Golden Valley covers nearly 50 hectares, located on the same greenstone belt as the Happy Valley mine.
The project has a history of high-grade underground mining and gold production across two shafts in the 1930s and 1940s. However, since then, other than ongoing small-scale production from toll-milling third-party ore through an onsite stamp mill and processing plant, its “true” potential has been not been significantly investigated.
That’s where Pambili comes in.
Given its extent, geological setting, and the high grade of historic production, the Company believes that Golden Valley presents significant bulk and underground mining potential.
Pambili plans to invest in the exploration and development needed to assess that potential properly, examining both its underground potential and near-surface potential for a larger-scale gold deposit.
An example of heavily pyritized quartz from the Golden Valley Project area.
It’s not an overnight task.
Pambili will begin by ensuring the safety of underground workings, surveying and building a 3D model, and conducting underground geological mapping and sampling. It will also initiate surface ridge and spur geochemical soil sampling and preparations for planned underground diamond drilling next year.
But the key points are:
The work Pambili has completed at Happy Valley has given it confidence in its belief that an injection of capital could help to realize the true potential of Zimbabwe’s proven producing mines, and
Golden Valley represents an excellent opportunity to put this theory to test, given all the Company already knows about the project.
Pambili will be updating the market regularly on its progress over the coming weeks and months. It will also continue to assess some of the other projects Steve has highlighted.
For the meantime, however, the Company has laid the groundwork for its growth.
Particularly following its recent share rollback, the addition of Kevin Blanchette and his corporate experience to its board, and the cementing of its relationship with Kavango following the recent conversion of its US$250,000 loan to equity in the Company.
There are no two ways about it – it will be exciting to see where Pambili pushes forward from here. We will continue to cover these developments – along with updates on the wider mining backdrop in Zimbabwe – in this newsletter over the coming months.
