Interview with Rupert Verco, Managing Director and CEO, Cobra Resources
Our previous interview: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/posts/cobra-resources-lsecobr-two-new-zones-widen-manna-hill-copper-footprint-in-south-australia-12288
Recording date: 22nd September 2026
Cobra Resources plc (LSE:COBR) has moved its Manna Hill Copper Project in South Australia from visual indications to laboratory-confirmed discoveries. The first assays from its slim-line RC programme confirm copper across three targets, and they add the most direct evidence yet for a porphyry system beneath the known Blue Rose skarn.
The headline result came from Blue Rose West. Drillhole MHRC0029 returned 32m at 0.70% Cu and 0.07 g/T Au from 52m, including 12m at 1.13% Cu from 56m and 4m at 1.33% Cu from 78m. What sets this hole apart is its setting. It sits outside the mineralised skarn, in strongly potassic altered rock, and against a large magnetic anomaly about 600m beyond the 1.6km of defined Blue Rose strike. Managing Director and CEO Rupert Verco described it as a step change in potential scale, and said the anomaly is possibly the porphyry intrusion itself. He pointed to other elevated elements and the team's improved understanding of local sediments as reasons to read the potassium as alteration rather than a naturally potassium-rich host.
The two new skarns add the near-surface side of the story. Shadow Rose, about 200m south of Blue Rose, returned 58m at 0.46% Cu and 0.15 g/T Au from only 12m, including 42m at 0.56% Cu and 10m at 1.09% Cu. Verco said there is potentially a 2km strike zone to test along trend. Neptune Rose, 500m north, returned 10m at 0.39% Cu from 104m. Three more holes across these targets are awaiting assays.
Thirty-two holes and more than 2,800m have been drilled, and the programme has been extended to 64 holes. Verco indicated roughly six to ten holes on the porphyry target, 15 to 20 at Blue Rose and Shadow Rose, and the first drilling at Netley Hill in over 20 years. Petrophysical work on earlier core will guide the choice of geophysics, and a drone magnetic survey is planned.
On depth and processing, Verco said earlier diamond drilling hit sulphides to around 320m to 350m, and the Blue Rose West interval is largely sulphide from around 50m. That shows primary mineralisation beneath the oxides. Metallurgical testwork will follow this drilling. Management expects the sulphides to suit conventional flotation, while oxide processing options are still to be assessed. The stated priority is scale first and metallurgy second.
Cobra reports that the programme is fully funded, helped by recent warrant exercises. Over the next 12 months, however, spending is expected to split roughly 60/40 toward the company's rare earth project, where an ISR pilot or small-scale production study is planned and strategic offtake partnerships are being considered for funding.
For investors, the case now rests on continuity and orientation. The key watch-items are the pending assays, the six holes into the magnetic body, Netley Hill results and any data that firms up true widths. The main risks are the absence of a resource, untested metallurgy and competition for capital from the rare earth asset.
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