Four Projects and Multiple Catalysts: The Upside Potential at Eastport Critical Minerals

Dear Reader,

Eastport Critical Minerals is moving quickly across its portfolio of copper, rare earths, uranium and nickel-copper projects in Botswana.

In less than a year, the company has drilled four project areas, made a new uranium discovery, and expanded its flagship copper system. It’s also identified multi-kilometre nickel-copper targets and a potentially large-scale rare earth system for follow-up, with more assays, geophysics and drilling still to come.

That’s a great deal of progress for a company currently valued at just C$18.4m.

And with several projects now entering their next phase of work, there are plenty of opportunities for Eastport to keep moving the story forward.

Here, we look at the company’s assets, what it’s already found, and what comes next…

Flagship copper opportunity

Before we get into the projects themselves, it’s worth acknowledging the jurisdiction.

Eastport is operating in Botswana, a country with a long mining history, established infrastructure, a skilled workforce and a supportive regulatory environment. As a result of these supportive factors, the Fraser Institute’s 2025 survey ranked Botswana first in Africa and seventh globally for investment attractiveness.

That’s clearly a useful backdrop for a company advancing several exploration projects at once.

And the natural place to start is Eastport’s flagship: the Matsitama Copper Project.

Matsitama comprises six exploration licenses covering 1,845km² in an established copper district alongside the Mowana (Kopano) and Thakadu mines. The project came with more than 50,000m of historical drilling, over 115,000 soil samples, extensive geophysical data, and more than 20 identified copper prospects.

In the South East of the project is Nakalakwana Hill, where a historical 2013 estimate outlined 9.9Mt at 0.464% copper, containing more than 45,000 tonnes of copper.

Step-out drilling around Nakalkwana, meanwhile, intersected copper several kilometres to both the east and west. This opened up the possibility of a mineralised trend extending for roughly 10km, with three holes cutting more than 100m of copper mineralisation, with higher-grade zones internally.

But Nakalakwana is only a small part of the picture.

The project also includes the Tholo to Copper Snake zone, a roughly 30km-long strong soil anomaly target area crossed by major structural folds and faults, including Tholo and Tholo North. The Phute and Phudulooga areas, meanwhile, sit directly south of the Mowana Mine and on the same associated major fault. 

Exploration at the historical Nakalakwana resource has validated the historical drilling, highlighted the potential for resource extension, underlined the clear correlation of copper to structure and shown the potential large-scale mineralisation. 

Eastport now plans to focus on the Tholo to Copper Snake zone at the Matsitama project as it believes this has potential to be part of a much broader, large-scale copper system. Planned work includes geophysics followed by targeted drilling. 

Broad rare earths potential

Next up is Semarule, another project very much worth watching.

Last week, Eastport reported the first assay results from its maiden drilling programme at the 250km² rare earth asset, around 40km from Botswana’s capital of Gaborone.

The target is a large alkaline intrusive system, with the principal syenite body exposed across roughly 5km by 3km. And the first hole gave Eastport an encouraging start:

• SEM005 returned 330m at 0.21% TREO from just 20m, including 47.5m at 0.64%, 7.5m at 2.52% and 2.5m at 5.95% TREO.

Around 28% of the TREO consisted of magnetic rare earth oxides, including dysprosium, terbium, neodymium and praseodymium. These are the elements used in high-strength permanent magnets. 

But the standout at this stage is arguably the width: 330m of mineralisation from the first hole reported.

In our latest StockBox interview, CEO Daniel Major stressed these are the first holes ever drilled into the system. So, the key question now is whether Eastport can repeat that kind of broad mineralisation elsewhere across the much larger intrusive target.

The good news is we shouldn’t have to wait too long for more clues.

Seven further holes remain to be reported, including SEM007 (seen with SEM005 below), drilled directly into the centre of the gravity anomaly. Internal XRF work has also given the team encouragement ahead of the laboratory assays.

If those holes begin showing similar continuity, Semarule could start to look considerably more significant.

After the remaining assays, Eastport plans to move into mineralogical work and broader RC drilling aimed at understanding resource potential, with metallurgical testing to follow as the project develops.

The wider portfolio

Two of Eastport’s other projects are starting to generate their own reasons to pay attention, too:

1) At Foley, Eastport has already made a uranium discovery immediately north of Lotus Resources’ Letlhakane deposit. Maiden drilling across two parallel fences confirmed shallow uranium mineralisation over more than 1.4km of strike, including 8m at 553ppm U₃O₈, with 2m at 1,272ppm, and 6m at 501ppm U₃O₈.

The system remains open along strike and down dip, so the next phase is about stepping out, adding geophysics and working out whether Eastport can turn that initial discovery into something larger.

2) Then there’s Selebi-East, where the company controls a 1,232km² licence package around seven kilometres east of the historic Selebi nickel-copper mining complex.

Soil sampling has already outlined multi-kilometre nickel-copper anomalies associated with prospective amphibolite rocks.

Interestingly, the same broad exploration approach played a role in the original discovery of Selebi decades ago. That obviously doesn’t mean Eastport will repeat that success, but it gives the company a well-established geological model to test.

Deep-penetrating geophysics comes next, with the aim of turning those surface anomalies into drill targets.

Bringing it all together

Eastport has a lot of work moving across several projects at once. And it’s all backed by an experienced team.

CEO Daniel Major brings 40 years of mining, development and finance experience, including more than a decade leading GoviEx Uranium, while co-founder and Chairman Burns Singh Tennent-Bhohi remains closely involved.

Moreover, the alignment and capital structure here is strong.

Directors and insiders own approximately 21.8% of Eastport, the company has previously secured strategic financing from a significant natural resources fund manager, and the share structure remains relatively tight at 33.5m shares outstanding and approximately 52.3m fully diluted.

This combination of experience, alignment, a tight capital structure and multiple active exploration programmes make Eastport’s current C$18.4m valuation particularly interesting.

Matsitama offers both known-resource growth and district-scale copper upside. Semarule has seven more assays to come from a newly drilled rare earth system. Foley has a uranium discovery to expand, while Selebi-East is moving towards geophysics and potential drilling.

They won’t all need to deliver for Eastport’s valuation to start looking very different.

And with several of those catalysts approaching at once, the next few months should give investors a much clearer idea of just how much potential sits within the company’s portfolio.

Best wishes,
The StockBox Team