• Kavango Resources has extended the completion of its Nara Gold Project acquisition for the third time since July 2025, citing legal formalities in Zimbabwe's mining sector
• The gold price is at a record high of ~$5,025/oz, making each delay costly in terms of forgone revenue
• Both parties remain committed to the transaction, with no new deadline set

Harare- Kavango Resources, the Southern Africa-focused metals exploration and gold production company dual-listed on the London Stock Exchange and Zimbabwe's Victoria Falls Stock Exchange, has announced that the completion of its acquisition of the Nara Gold Project in Zimbabwe has been extended for the third time since the option was originally exercised.

The Nara Gold Project consists of 45 claims in Zimbabwe, and Kavango agreed to acquire 100% of the asset from its seller, identified in communications only as Simon Bowman, with whom chairperson and Interim CEO Peter Wynter Bee says he is delighted to be working toward completion.

The company has not set a new specific completion deadline, noting only that both parties are working toward enabling the finalisation of legal formalities and that both remain committed to the transaction.

Kavango Resources is a company with ambitions that extend well beyond a single gold project. The group's broader exploration portfolio spans Southern Africa with a focus on battery metals and precious metals across Botswana and Zimbabwe, and its dual listing on the LSE and VFEX reflects a deliberate strategy to access both international capital markets and the growing investor base on Zimbabwe's hard currency exchange.

The Nara Gold acquisition sits within that strategy as a production-stage asset that would provide the company with near-term gold revenue while its longer-duration exploration projects are developed. At gold above $5,000 per ounce, the revenue potential of a producing gold property in Zimbabwe is among the most compelling in the junior mining sector globally, which makes the completion delays analytically significant rather than merely administratively inconvenient.

The timeline of the Nara acquisition is the most analytically important context for this announcement. The option was exercised on 1 July 2025, an event that committed both parties to completing the sale and purchase of the 45-claim project. The first extension was announced on 9 December 2025, moving the completion deadline to 27 February 2026 as the parties worked through the transaction requirements.

The second extension was announced on 2 March 2026, just three days after the extended deadline had passed, indicating that completion had again not been achieved within the agreed window. The third and current extension, announced on 19 March 2026, comes seventeen days after the second, with no new date set and the parties described as working toward legal formality finalisation without a timeline commitment.

At each stage, the language from both the company and the seller has remained constructive and committed. The repeated extensions are attributed to legal formalities rather than any breakdown in the commercial terms or the parties' intentions.

The specific reference to legal formalities in the context of a Zimbabwean gold mining claims transaction is informative. Mining claims in Zimbabwe are governed by the Mines and Minerals Act and administered through the Ministry of Mines and Mining Development. The transfer of mining claims from one legal entity to another requires the consent of the Mining Commissioner, a process that involves verification of the claims' status, confirmation that all statutory obligations including minimum work obligations and annual fees are current, assessment of any environmental or community obligations attached to the claims, and the formal transfer of the registration in the national mining cadastre.

For a 45-claim package, this process involves each claim being individually processed through the administrative system. In Zimbabwe's regulatory environment, where the mining administration has faced capacity constraints and where the government's evolving mineral policy framework including export restrictions and reserved sector regulations has increased the compliance workload on both mines and the regulatory authority, the timeframes for mining title transfers can extend well beyond what the parties initially anticipate.

The additional regulatory context for 2026 is relevant. Zimbabwe's government announced the suspension of raw mineral exports including concentrates in early 2026 and introduced new regulations around reserved sectors in mining. While these measures are directed primarily at large-scale and artisanal producers rather than at the transfer of title between private parties, they reflect a regulatory environment that is actively evolving and in which the administrative burden on the mining authority has increased at the same time as the scrutiny of individual transactions has been elevated.

A gold claims transfer that might have been processed within a standard administrative window in 2024 may face longer review times in the current environment simply because the regulator is managing a higher volume of compliance and enforcement activity simultaneously.

The timing of the Nara delays against the backdrop of gold's extraordinary price performance gives the completion question a financial dimension that would not have existed at lower price levels. Gold traded at approximately $3,431 per ounce on average through 2025, a record for the year. By early February 2026, the gold price breached $5,000 per ounce for the first time in history, a level that has been sustained and extended through March 2026, with gold currently trading around $5,025 per ounce.

Zimbabwe's large-scale miners saw their royalty rate double from 5% to 10% at that threshold, confirming the structural significance of the $5,000 level in the sector's economics. For a junior gold producer operating a 45-claim project, the per-ounce economics of production at $5,025 compared to $3,431 represent an extraordinary improvement in project economics that makes each month of delayed completion increasingly costly in terms of forgone revenue.

When the Nara acquisition completes, and both parties' stated commitment makes completion the base case outcome, it will represent a meaningful step in Kavango's transition from a pure exploration company to a company with producing gold assets on its books. A producing asset at current gold prices transforms the financial profile of a small-cap explorer, it provides revenue to fund ongoing exploration, reduces dependence on equity capital markets for operational costs, and creates a track record of operational execution in Zimbabwe that is relevant for the company's larger exploration programme.

The 45 claims of the Nara project, once in Kavango's hands with clean title, become the foundation on which the company builds its Zimbabwe gold production story at a moment when that story is set against one of the most favourable gold price backdrops in history.

NARA GOLD PROJECT ACQUISITION — COMPLETION TIMELINE

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