Namibia is emerging as a copper exploration hub as Australian juniors C29 Metals and Midas Minerals ramp up drilling across underexplored Proterozoic copper belts using extensive historical datasets from past state and major-company campaigns. C29 managing director Shannon Green is targeting large-scale sediment-hosted systems analogous to the Central African Copperbelt, with modern geophysics and deeper RC and diamond drilling testing beneath shallow cover that limited earlier work. For geologists and miners, Namibia offers district-scale potential with relatively simple logistics, established mining law, and scope for rapid resource definition if current programs hit thickness and grade.

American Ocean Minerals has completed its three‑week Expedition 7 in the Cook Islands’ EEZ, using the 196‑foot research vessel Anuanua Moana to survey 53 sites and collect 60 box cores, 62 multicores and 4,059 physical samples over Moana Minerals’ EL3 polymetallic nodule licence. The campaign integrates sediment physico‑chemistry, macrofaunal and meiofaunal counts, foraminiferal studies, eDNA, bathymetry and water‑column biomass data to define baseline ecological conditions and resource variability. Results will feed directly into Moana Minerals’ Environmental Impact Statement due H1 2027 and a pre‑feasibility study targeted for H2 2026.

REalloys is raising US$100 million via a securities purchase agreement to fund a vertically integrated mine-to-magnet rare earth supply chain centred on its Hoidas Lake project in Saskatchewan and downstream magnet manufacturing in Euclid, Ohio. The company is partnering with the Saskatchewan Research Council to scale heavy rare earth separation, refining and metallisation, and has a 15-year offtake for concentrates from Critical Metals’ Tanbreez project in Greenland. Bloomberg reports REalloys may also build a rare earth separation plant at the US Army’s Tooele Army Depot in Utah, pending government approval.