Replacing what we mine, in a business designed to run out.

The problem exploration exists to solve

A mine is a depleting asset. Every tonne Quintel sells is a tonne the group no longer owns, and the reserve statement published each December is a countdown as much as it is an inventory. There are exactly three ways to replace what is mined: find it, buy it, or accept decline and eventually liquidation.

Buying is fast, certain and expensive, and it is most expensive precisely when everybody agrees the commodity has a future — which is when boards are most inclined to do it. Finding is slow, uncertain and cheap. Most exploration programmes fail. The ones that succeed generate returns that no acquisition at a cycle peak can match.

Quintel therefore allocates a fixed percentage of operating cash flow — currently 4.5% — to exploration, set annually by the board and deliberately insulated from the commodity price. The point of a fixed allocation is that it prevents the group from doing what the industry does collectively and disastrously: exploring hardest when ground is most expensive and stopping entirely when it is cheapest.

Three horizons

Near-mine. Roughly 55% of the exploration budget is spent within trucking distance of an existing plant. This is the cheapest ounce or tonne in the industry: it uses infrastructure that is already built, a workforce that is already hired and a permit that is already granted. The Mbengwe north-east down-dip extension and the Asankran deep plunge are both near-mine programmes, and between them they have added more reserve life than any acquisition the group has made.

District. About 20% is spent on ground within 100 kilometres of an operation, where a discovery could be trucked to an existing plant. The twelve untested targets on the Bagoé permit package fall into this category once the plant is built.

Greenfield. The remaining 25% funds genuine grassroots work in ground where Quintel has no operation. Erongo in Namibia is the current programme. This is the money most likely to be written off entirely and the only money that can produce a step change.

Exploration spend and outcome

Reserve added is stated on a copper-equivalent basis using three-year trailing average prices, and includes reserve added by near-mine drilling at producing assets. Discovery cost is exploration spend divided by copper-equivalent reserve added and will vary substantially year to year.

How we report results

Exploration is where a mining company’s honesty is easiest to verify and easiest to abuse. These rules are group policy and apply to every announcement.

• Every hole drilled in a reported programme is disclosed, including holes with no significant intercept. A programme is never reported as a selection of its best holes.
• Intercepts are reported with the full assay interval and the cut-off grade applied. High-grade sub-intervals may be quoted in addition to, never instead of, the full interval.
• Downhole widths are stated as downhole widths, with an estimate of true width given wherever the geometry is understood well enough to make one.
• Assay laboratories, sample preparation methods and quality assurance data — standards, blanks and duplicates — are published in a technical appendix with every result announcement.
• Where a programme fails, we say so in the same format and with the same prominence as we would have used for a success.

Access before drilling

Exploration is the first contact a community has with a mining company, and it sets the terms of everything afterwards. A drill rig that arrives without warning on farmland, leaves an unlined sump and does not come back has cost the industry more consent than any single mine failure.

Quintel negotiates a written access agreement with landholders, communal conservancy committees or traditional authorities before a rig moves, covering compensation for crop and land disturbance, water use, road use, employment and the rehabilitation standard. Drill sites are rehabilitated within 90 days of completion, sumps are lined and backfilled, and a photographic record of each site before and after is retained and available to the landholder.

Where the group holds ground it decides not to drill, it relinquishes the licence rather than holding it speculatively. Since 2020 Quintel has relinquished eleven licences covering 3,140 square kilometres.

Current programmes

Erongo, Namibia. A greenfield sediment-hosted copper search across 1,840 square kilometres, with 40,840 metres drilled to date and the Otjiwa corridor traced over 2.4 kilometres of strike. A maiden resource is targeted for 2027. Full programme detail.

Mbengwe north-east, Zambia. Deep drilling on the down-dip extension, where three holes in 2025 intersected mineralisation at reserve-consistent grades between 780 and 940 metres. A resource update is scheduled for the first half of 2027.

Asankran deep plunge, Ghana. Testing the high-grade shoot below the 940 metre level, where the plunge remains open. Six holes are planned in 2026 from an underground drill platform.

Bagoé district, Côte d’Ivoire. Twelve geochemical and geophysical targets within trucking distance of the planned plant, all untested. Drilling begins after the final investment decision so that access, camp and logistics can be shared with early works.

Fatala regional, Guinea. Systematic auger and pitting across the wider plateau to define the next twenty years of mining strips and confirm the reactive silica distribution that determines product quality.