Krakatoa Resources Ltd (ASX:KTA) is preparing to restart drilling at its Zopkhito antimony-gold project in Georgia within weeks, after securing a two-year extension to the exploration period under the project’s active mineral extraction licence.
The extension, granted through a decree signed by Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze in early June, gives the company additional time to progress exploration and development work across the 1,779-hectare project in the Racha region.
Preparations for the 2026 field season are nearing completion, with site access and snow clearance well advanced. Surface and underground drilling activities are expected to begin this month.
Left- Winter snow pack being removed from the camp access track (May 30 ); Right– Drill rig mobilisation to Camp (June 8 ).
Building on 2025 results
The upcoming field program follows 2025 drilling that confirmed high-grade antimony and gold mineralisation beyond historical workings at Zopkhito.
Krakatoa’s 2025 exploration strategy focused on areas between historical adits, where previous sampling had identified high-grade mineralisation. The company said drilling validated the historical geological model by intersecting mineralisation across multiple target zones and confirming an extended gold alteration system, in addition to high-grade quartz-antimony vein development.
“The 2025 drilling program delivered strong results and further demonstrated the high-grade antimony and gold potential at Zopkhito,” CEO Mark Major said.
“Securing an additional 2-year exploration extension is a highly positive development, giving us the runway to build on this momentum and gives us added flexibility as we move the project forward.”
Resource work and development studies
The 2026 program will focus on resource definition drilling, metallurgical optimisation and preliminary mining studies.
The work programs are designed to support progression toward a JORC-compliant mineral resource estimate and future development studies.
The company will also continue environmental baseline studies and permitting activities in parallel with exploration and technical work.
Option to acquire up to 80%
Zopkhito is held under an existing exploration-mining licence valid until March 2042. Krakatoa holds an exclusive option to acquire up to an 80% interest in the project.
The project contains a foreign resource estimate of 225,000 tonnes at 11.6% antimony for 26,000 tonnes of contained antimony and 7.1 million tonnes at 3.7 g/t gold for 815,119 ounces of gold.
Krakatoa cautioned that the foreign estimate is not reported in accordance with the JORC Code 2012 and that further work is required before it can be classified as a mineral resource under that standard.
Zopkhito also benefits from extensive historical exploration, including around 27 kilometres of underground exploration adits, more than 15,000 historical channel and geochemical samples, and previous LiDAR and induced polarisation geophysical surveys.
