AIM listed resource company Kalahari Minerals (LON:KAH) this morning sounded an upbeat assessment of its activities during the last year. Kalahari is the majority shareholder in Australian mining group Extract Resources, which is currently carrying out a major drilling programme at the world-class Husab uranium project in Namibia. During the year, Kalahari upped its stake in Extract by 0.82% to 40.78% as it looked to maintain its holding in what has become its primary value driver.

Extract is currently using an army of drilling rigs at the Rössing South area of Husab ahead of plans for a definitive feasibility study of the project in the coming months. Rossing South has already been defined as the highest grade granite-hosted uranium deposit in Namibia and is expected to be one of the top five global uranium deposits by contained metal and a total resource in excess of 500Mlbs U3O8. For detailed information and discussion about Extract Resources, click here.

Elsewhere, Kalahari spent the year rationalising its gold, copper and base metal assets through a joint development agreement with North River Resources in which Kalahari holds a 44.7% stake in North River. The idea behind this was to fast track production plans in order to attribute tangible value to the projects. Since forming the relationship in November 2009, North River has implemented an aggressive development programme focused primarily on developing the key copper projects and the Namib lead zinc project towards production, where considerable work was previously carried out by Kalahari.

Mark Hohnen, Kalahari’s chairman, said: “We made excellent progress crystallising the value of our interests in our uranium, gold, copper and base metal assets in Namibia over the past year, both through operational developments and through the implementation of key corporate initiatives. We remain wholly supportive of Extract's rapid development schedule for its world-class uranium assets, and look forward to the next phase of development which will include both a resource upgrade and the publication of a definitive feasibility study in the coming months.”

In May, Kalahari sold a 7.2% stake in its share capital to Hong Kong listed natural resources investor APAC Resources for £29.6m.

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