OUR STORY
One Company.
Four Critical Minerals.
An Evolving Story.
July 2023 – June 2026
PROLOGUE
A Bet on Malawi
On 5 July 2023, Chilwa Minerals Limited rang the bell on the Australian Securities Exchange. It was a modest debut — 67.2 million shares on issue, a market capitalisation of $13.44 million, and $8 million freshly raised from investors who shared a single conviction: that the land surrounding Lake Chilwa in southern Malawi held something exceptional.
The pitch was straightforward. Chilwa had acquired 100% of a Heavy Mineral Sands (HMS) project around the northern, western and southern shores of one of Africa's great alkaline lakes. An existing JORC 2012 inferred resource of 2.4 million tonnes of Total Heavy Mineralisation (THM) sat waiting to be tested properly. Luso Global Mining — a subsidiary of Mota-Engil, one of Africa's largest engineering and construction groups — held approximately 30% of the company and was escrowed for two years, signalling long-term conviction from a partner that understood the African mining landscape intimately.
"We are grateful to both existing and new shareholders of the Company who share our vision for developing the Lake Chilwa precinct into a truly significant critical minerals asset. The funds raised will be deployed immediately, with a $4.5 million exploration campaign already fully planned and ready to be implemented."
— Cadell Buss, Managing Director, on listing day
What Chilwa's founders knew — but couldn't yet prove — was that this wasn't just a mineral sands story. The land they were sitting on was geologically special in ways that would only become clear over the years ahead.
CHAPTER ONE
The Foundation — Heavy Mineral Sands
2023
The first question any junior miner must answer is not what is in the ground — it's can we actually extract it with confidence? Chilwa's inherited resource had been drilled in 2015 using air-core rigs that struggled to penetrate the water table. Average hole depth was just 6.23 metres. Many holes ended in mineralisation because the equipment simply couldn't go deeper. Sample recoveries averaged less than 70%.
This was a problem. Not because the mineralisation wasn't there — it clearly was — but because the data underpinning the resource was incomplete. You can't upgrade a resource classification or attract serious capital on the basis of shallow, poorly recovered drill holes.
The decision to deploy sonic drilling was one of the most important strategic choices Chilwa made. A sonic rig encapsulates the sample within the core barrel as it drills, preventing collapse, enabling penetration well below the water table, and delivering sample recoveries consistently above 95%. It costs more. It takes more planning. But it produces data you can trust.
By October 2023, drilling had commenced at Mposa — the project's largest individual deposit at 19.4 million tonnes at 4.3% THM, representing roughly 30% of the total resource. Cadell Buss set the tone:
"The commencement of this drilling campaign represents a milestone for the company. We will be seeking an improved understanding of the mineralisation at Mposa, especially at depth, which due to inadequate equipment was not targeted in previous drilling."
Community engagement meetings were completed across the Mposa region before a single hole was drilled. Local residents, host communities, government authorities and key stakeholders were all consulted. Chilwa understood early that a social licence to operate in Malawi was not a formality — it was foundational.
Also in October 2023, the team noted something that would grow increasingly significant: field XRF analysis of the deeper clay horizons beneath the sand was returning anomalous rare earth element readings. They filed it away. They kept drilling.
CHAPTER TWO
The Assays Arrive — and They Exceeded Expectations
Early - mid 2024
When the first sonic drill assay results came back in June 2024, they were better than hoped. The initial 50 holes at Mposa returned grades that stunned the team. Where the old air-core drilling had averaged 5.09% THM, the sonic programme was returning an average of 6.6% — a 30% increase in grade attributed directly to superior sample recovery. Holes were also intersecting mineralisation 6 to 13 metres thick, compared to the historic average of 5.5 metres.
The headline numbers told their own story:
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4.3m @ 26.3% THM, including 1m @ 45.0% THM from surface
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5m @ 25.8% THM from surface
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10m @ 12.8% THM, including 3m @ 36.6% THM from surface
"The drill programme has given us better results than we hoped for. If this improvement continues with more drilling results to come, we are optimistic that this will lead to an increase in the confidence classification and grade of the MRE."
— Cadell Buss, Managing Director
Chilwa had completed 3,560 metres — 21% of its planned programme. The momentum was building.
CHAPTER THREE
The Aeromagnetic Survey — Everything Changed
Mid - late 2024
Every once in a while in exploration, the picture suddenly gets much, much bigger. For Chilwa, that moment came in mid-2024.
The original exploration licence covered 881 square kilometres, but historical drilling had only ever targeted the northern and western areas where the known HMS deposits were located. The southern half of the tenement was effectively unmapped. As Cadell later explained:
"We did the airborne geophysics because nothing was mapped in the southern area. We only had areas in the north where all these deposits were. We did it over the whole tenement because we thought, well, we might as well do the whole lot and get it done properly, because there might be other things we've missed. And sure enough, that's what happened."
New Resolution Geophysics flew a high-resolution aeromagnetic and radiometric survey across the entire licence between May and June 2024. When the interpretation came back from Geo Focus Ltd in September 2024, the results were extraordinary.
Forty-seven geophysical features were identified that may represent carbonatites or alkaline intrusives — the rock types associated globally with rare earth element and niobium mineralisation. These "bottle tops," as Cadell called them, covered approximately 31 square kilometres across the licence and included several concentrically zoned high-priority anomalies consistent with carbonatite intrusions. Chilwa Island, located within the licence, was already a known carbonatite. The survey had revealed it was just one of potentially 47.
At the same time, the HMS programme had identified 52 mineral sands targets across the tenement. In the space of one survey campaign, Chilwa had gone from a single-commodity play with 10 known deposits to a multi-target critical minerals province.
"The prospectivity of the Chilwa Project has significantly increased and diversified into a multi-commodity asset, and we expect the positive news flow generated by the Project will increase over the next 6–12 months."
— Cadell Buss, Managing Director
CHAPTER FOUR
Building the Infrastructure to Move Faster
2024
One of the less-celebrated but genuinely strategic decisions Chilwa made during 2024 was to build a sample preparation laboratory on-site in Malawi. Every batch of drill samples previously had to be logged in Zomba, transported to South Africa for preparation, then airfreighted to ALS in Perth for analysis. Each batch took weeks and freighting costs were substantial. This bottleneck slowed the pace of discovery.
Building a certified ALS-managed preparation laboratory at Zalewa addressed this directly. Samples could be processed directly from Malawi to South African certification labs removing the need to send to Australia and significantly reducing the turnaround time for assay results. The lab also created permanent local employment and gave Chilwa direct control over a critical part of its analytical workflow.
Cadell was characteristically direct about why Malawi was the right place to be doing this:
"People asked why a junior explorer would build its own lab. The answer is simple — speed and control. Preparing samples in-country instead of shipping them halfway around the world took months out of every cycle, and it meant we were never waiting on someone else's priorities. It's one of the best decisions we made."
— Cadell Buss, Managing Director
Community engagement also deepened. Chilwa executives met with the Malawian Minister of Mining, Kenneth Zikhale Ng'oma, and participated in Mining Development Agreement discussions at government level — underscoring the company's ambition to be a serious, long-term participant in Malawi's mining sector.
CHAPTER FIVE
Three Rigs, Two Programmes, One Vision
Late 2024
By November 2024, Chilwa had deployed a third drill rig to the project. Running both the HMS sonic programme and the REE carbonatite diamond programme simultaneously with dedicated rigs, rather than alternating between objectives, was the most efficient way to generate information. The cost was real — deploying and staffing three rigs in Malawi is not trivial — but the opportunity cost of moving slowly on either programme was higher.
The Mpyupyu target — one of the highest-priority carbonatite anomalies from the aeromagnetic survey — was selected for the first diamond drilling campaign. The target measured around 250 metres north-south by 400 metres wide. Cadell noted the significance of precision:
"If you can prove that up, you're talking about adding significant value to the company. These targets are small and hard to find, so when the time came to drill, it was critically important to land exactly where we needed to."
Cadell Buss - Managing Director
CHAPTER SIX
REE Confirmed and the Ionic Clay Insight
2025
In May 2025, Chilwa confirmed a swarm of carbonatites with significant rare earth element mineralisation across its licence package. The project was no longer just a mineral sands story with REE upside. It was a genuinely multi-commodity critical minerals province.
And then came the ionic clay insight — born not from a planned programme, but from a geologist being thorough. During the HMS sonic drilling campaign, Chilwa's Competent Person Mark Burnett had insisted on drilling an extra 2 metres into the basal clay unit at the bottom of every hole. At the time, this seemed like academic over-investigation. But when those clay samples were tested, elevated rare earth values kept appearing. The REE in the clays appeared to be adsorbed onto fine-grained clay minerals in the basal horizon — pointing toward a potential Ionic Adsorption Clay (IAC) deposit.
" I have to credit our experienced consultants, who insisted on drilling an extra two metres into the clay at the bottom of every hole. That discipline is exactly what opened up the ionic clay opportunity for us. We've now got around 200 samples ready to test — a dataset most explorers would envy — and it came from doing the work properly rather than cutting corners."
— Cadell Buss -Managing Director
The strategic logic that was emerging was elegant in its coherence:
"Mineral sands will be the catalyst and starting point of our mining programmes, leading us into the exploration of the other critical minerals. The infrastructure we need — the Liwonde dry port, the exsisting rail, all these things — can then help us move into the ionic clays and the rare earths. If you're making money from HMS, that can help fund the rest. One feeds into the other."
— Cadell Buss, Managing Director
CHAPTER SEVEN
Capital and Momentum
October 2025
In October 2025, Chilwa completed an $8 million private placement — the same amount as the original IPO, but into a company with vastly more data, more discovery, and more commodity exposure than at listing. The placement brought in a new cohort of shareholders who understood where the story was heading. Proceeds funded the acceleration of drilling programmes, the expansion of the on-site laboratory, and the working capital necessary to sustain multiple parallel exploration streams.
"We raised that $8 million ourselves, directly with investors who understand the story, without a broker in the middle. That saved us many thousands of dollars in fees — money that goes straight into the ground rather than into someone's commission. When you're a junior explorer, every dollar you put into the project instead of the raise is a dollar working for shareholders."
— Cadell Buss, Managing Director
A JORC 2012-compliant Mineral Resource covering the Mposa, Mpyupyu Dune and Mpyupyu Flat deposits was announced in December 2025 — the culmination of the multi-year sonic drilling campaign.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Niobium Discovery — The World Took Notice
March 2026
On 9 March 2026, Chilwa made the announcement that crystallised the full significance of its licence.
Diamond drilling at the Mpyupyu target had intersected a previously unmapped peralkaline syenite intrusion hosting significant niobium mineralisation. Discovery hole MPYDD006 returned 0.31% Nb₂O₅ over 126 metres from 12 metres downhole. Approximately 90% of global niobium production comes from a single Brazilian company operating one deposit. The world has been actively seeking new sources. Chilwa had found one.
Follow-up results in May 2026 confirmed the scale of what had been found. Drillhole MPYDD009 — collared 180 metres to the north of the discovery hole — returned niobium mineralisation over the entire 385-metre length of the hole, averaging 0.17% Nb₂O₅ from surface with no cut-off applied. Higher-grade zones included 0.24% Nb₂O₅ over 60 metres and 0.34% Nb₂O₅ over 12 metres. The mineralisation remained open in multiple directions and at depth.
"385 metres of continuous niobium mineralisation from surface is exceptional by any measure. With every hole we drill, the scale and significance of this Niobium system grows. Combined with the significant work already completed on our Heavy Mineral Sands project, these Niobium results position Chilwa as a truly unique, multi-commodity critical minerals asset — all within a single contiguous licence in Southern Malawi."
— Cadell Buss, Managing Director
Cadell drew a pointed comparison to the challenges facing WA1 Resources' high-grade niobium project in remote Western Australia:
"Our grades aren't as high, but our cost base is completely different. We've got existing infrastructure, we've got a dry port, we've got an operating base. Higher grades in the middle of nowhere still costs a billion dollars of infrastructure. That's the point."
CHAPTER NINE
The Full Picture — Four Programmes, One Licence
2026
In May 2026, Lindian Resources — operators of the world-class Kangankunde REE deposit just 50 kilometres from Chilwa's licence — commissioned Chilwa's sample preparation laboratory to process samples from their own project. One of the most respected REE companies in Africa had chosen to trust Chilwa's infrastructure, Chilwa's team, and Chilwa's capability.
By June 2026, Chilwa Minerals was running four concurrent exploration programmes within its single, contiguous Lake Chilwa licence:
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Heavy Mineral Sands — JORC 2012-compliant Mineral Resource announced December 2025 across Mposa, Mpyupyu Dune and Mpyupyu Flat. Revised Resource Estimate and scoping study underway.
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Niobium-REE Discovery — Two diamond rigs actively drilling the Nakombe target. Tantalum and gallium co-products present. Maiden Resource Estimate in planning.
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Carbonatite-hosted REE — Systematic exploration across 47 geophysical anomalies with REE mineralisation confirmed at multiple targets.
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Ionic Clay REE — 200 samples from existing HMS sonic holes undergoing analysis and leach testing. If results confirm REE grade and leachability, a low-cost fourth commodity stream awaits.
"We could potentially be the only asset globally that's got a mineral sands project, a hard rock niobium project, and an ionic clay project. No other company anywhere that I know of has got all three on the one tenement. That makes it a truly unique critical minerals project."
— Cadell Buss, Managing Director
EPILOGUE
Why We Did What We Did
Looking back across three years — from a modest $8 million IPO to a multi-commodity critical minerals company with a significant niobium discovery, 47 REE targets, 52 Heavy Mineral Sands targets, a JORC-compliant HMS resource, and an emerging ionic clay programme — the decisions along the way have a coherent logic worth making explicit.
01
We chose sonic drilling over speed.
The temptation to drill fast and cheap was real. We chose to drill properly, accepting the higher cost and slower initial pace in exchange for data that would actually hold up. That decision is why the grades coming out of Mposa were transformative rather than incremental.
02
We mapped what we didn't know.
The aeromagnetic survey over the entire tenement — not just the known HMS areas — was a conscious decision to understand the full extent of what we had, even though the southern area had never been explored. It revealed 47 carbonatite targets and changed the trajectory of the company.
03
We built infrastructure before we needed it.
The on-site preparation laboratory, the base camp at Zalewa, the diamond rig procurement — all were investments in operational capability that preceded the need. When the niobium discovery demanded speed, the infrastructure was already there.
04
We listened when the geology spoke.
The REE readings in the clay units during HMS drilling. The syenite intrusion in the Mpyupyu drill holes. The elevated ionic clay REE values from a competent person who insisted on drilling 2 metres deeper than required. In each case, the company followed what the data was telling it rather than forcing the story back into a simpler narrative.
05
We chose Malawi deliberately, and we stand by that choice.
The jurisdiction is stable, the government is supportive, the cost base is sustainable, and the geology is extraordinary. The shared infrastructure model — one licence, four commodity streams, one team — is only possible because everything sits in the same place.
06
One feeds into the other.
Mineral sands makes money and builds the infrastructure — the processing plant, the dry port logistics, the operational base. That infrastructure reduces the cost of advancing ionic clays. The cash flows from those two streams help fund the niobium development. It is not just a portfolio of opportunities. It is a system.
The story of Chilwa Minerals from July 2023 to June 2026 is, at its heart, the story of a small team operating in a remote part of Africa, staying disciplined, following the science, and discovering that the ground beneath Lake Chilwa is far more remarkable than anyone had previously understood.
We are grateful to the shareholders who have accompanied us on this journey. The work ahead will be the most consequential in the company's history. We are ready.