Serval Resources
Let's get to work.
Good Morning Team.
You’ve had the background, but now we have the plan of attack for Serval Resources.
As a reminder, this is an AIM explorer with a credible team, ground across two of Africa’s best copper neighbourhoods and a market cap that hasn’t caught up to the postcode.
Last week’s RNS is exactly what you want to see from a company weeks from admission — not a drill result, not yet, but the work programme, laid out in detail, fully funded through to mid-2027.
Specific licences, specific techniques and a specific timeline.
The big picture
Serval’s approach across all three jurisdictions is the same: mapping, geophysics and soil sampling first, drilling later. Build the geological picture, narrow the targets, and don’t put a rig anywhere until you know what you’re drilling into.
The headline number worth holding onto is Q4 2026 — that’s now the specific window for Serval’s first drill programme, in Namibia.
Everything published today is the de-risking work that happens before that.
As Birchall put it in the release:
‘We are currently mobilising our teams in order to complete extensive work in the field in the coming months…We are confident that this multi-dataset approach will significantly de-risk future drilling.’
Namibia — Kaoko Basin
The geological detail here has sharpened since admission. The target horizon is now specified more precisely - the contact between the Nosib and Otavi Groups, and within the Otavi Group specifically between the Omivero and Lower Omao Formations, and between the Lower and Upper Omao Formations.
EPL 7081 remains the priority licence, and it now comes with three named targets rather than one — Omatapati (the one we already knew about), plus Horseshoe and Otjozongombe.
The new figure worth circling - historical drilling at Otjozongombe intercepted 19 metres at 2.6% copper. That’s a higher grade than anything previously disclosed at Omatapati, and it suggests the licence has more than one strong target to chase.
Some of this mineralisation sits in outcrop, meaning it can be mapped directly. Where the target horizon disappears under alluvium, the plan is geophysics and soil sampling to track it under cover, with targeted trenching to help with structural interpretation.
EPL 7079 and EPL 6998 — the less-drilled licences — get regional mapping and geophysics to establish the full extent of the Nosib contact across the wider package.
The phased plan to December 2026:
Mapping first — surface reconnaissance, documenting visible mineralisation and structural orientation.
High-resolution ground magnetics — refining the Nosib/Otavi contact and identifying structural traps under cover.
Soil sampling — geochemical grids over the best targets from the first two phases, analysed in the field with handheld XRF for fast turnaround.
Maiden drilling — testing the highest-ranked targets, aiming to establish strike and depth continuity and build toward an exploration target range.
Drilling is targeted for Q4 2026.
Botswana — Kalahari Copper Belt
PL235 and PL232 remain the priorities, both along strike from Khoemacau — their neighbour enjoys a total resource of 450 million tonnes at 1.4% copper and 18 g/t silver, bought by MMG for $1.9 billion.
That’s the kind of deposit size this fold belt is capable of producing.
PL232 sits in the hinge zone of a large regional anticline, directly on the Ngwako Pan–D’Kar contact. The work here is high-resolution drone magnetics plus Audio-Frequency Magnetotellurics (AMT) — the magnetics for structural trends and lithological contrasts, the AMT for detecting conductive sulphide responses and mapping how deep the Kalahari sand sits across the licence.
PL235 gets drone magnetics at higher resolution than the existing regional map, followed by soil sampling once the geophysics has narrowed the search area.
The recurring operational challenge across the KCB is cover — sand in most places, occasionally barren Karoo volcanics on top of that — which is why the geophysics-first approach matters here more than almost anywhere else in the portfolio.
Côte d’Ivoire — Duékoué
This was the most interesting line in last week’s release, because it’s new. Last month I noted that exploration funds hadn’t been allocated to Côte d’Ivoire while the team focused on Namibia and Botswana.
A budgeting review has now freed up what the company calls a ‘small but impactful’ programme to keep Duékoué moving.
It’s modest by design — ground magnetics, soil sampling and geological mapping along optimised traverse lines — but it means the IOCG story doesn’t go cold while the bigger assets take priority.
The aim is to pin down exactly where the molybdenum-copper-gold anomaly is strongest, and what structural and fluid pathways might sit beneath it.
It’s worth noting that at 399 km², the Duékoué licence is significant in scale. Cheap option, big ground.
One for the Diary
Serval is presenting at the Proactive One2One Investor Forum in London on 24 June. Worth a look if you want the team’s own framing of all this directly — registration is at proactiveinvestors.co.uk.
Beyond Serval, it’s a good line up.
The bottom line
The company has gone from ‘here’s our strategy’ to ‘here’s the exact sequence of mapping, magnetics and soil sampling, on each named licence, funded to mid-2027, with a drill date attached.’
That’s the discipline I flagged earlier this year, now showing up in an RNS.
Q4 2026 for the first hole. The geophysics in between is the homework that decides where it goes.
Watch this space.