The uranium junior unexpectedly struck a series of coal deposits earlier this year in the southern African country and has since begun the process of evaluating the assets and redefining itself as a multi-commodity energy company.

A-Cap says two of the three uranium licences found to include coal have already been granted government approval for coal prospecting and approval for the third is imminent.

At the most northerly Mea deposit, the company reports “bright lustrous coal” within a carbonaceous unit over 100m in thickness.

The Bolau discovery, which is adjacent to African Energy’s flagship Sese project, has been identified to include two sub-bituminous seams with an average thickness of 20m.

“We’ve got the updip and downdip of African Energy’s coal,” A-Cap chief executive Paul Thomson said of the deposit’s promising proximity to Sese’s well documented resource.

“They’ve got a JORC-compliant resource of 2.5 billion tonnes of thermal coal.

“So without having done much work, we’re saying it’s a continuous up and downdip on the same sort of surface area – so we’ve got more or less the same quality and the same amount.”

Further south, the Letlhakane uranium site is tipped to hold between 75Mt and 150Mt of thermal coal.

A-Cap said although its coal plans were still in the early stages, Mea and Bolau were well-placed to take advantage of various existing and developing infrastructure connecting Botswana with Indian and Atlantic Ocean export terminals.

“There are about 15 coal projects in Botswana and they’re all hamstrung by the fact that to get thermal coal to port you need a dedicated standard gage railway line doing about 100Mt a year to make it pay,” Thomson said.

“They’re all waiting for the government to make a decision as to which way the line will go, whether it goes out through to Namibia or east to Mozambique.”

A-Cap, however, said it could get a project up and running using an existing 400Mt-capacity rail line with a spur just north of its coal properties.

“African Energy have just sent two shipments, one of 25t, one of 1000t on the existing rail out to the port in Mozambique, so they’ve proved it can be done,” Thomson said.

“If we’ve got higher quality here, we can command a higher price and take advantage of the existing capacity on that railway.”