Kevin Bonel

Kevin Bonel is a geologist and mining executive whose career connects two of the most significant copper deposits in the Zambia-Congo Copperbelt. As Chief Operating Officer at Midnight Sun Mining (TSXV: MMA), he leads the exploration of the Dumbwa copper target, a 20-kilometre soil anomaly that the company believes could mirror the scale of Barrick Gold's nearby Lumwana mine. For copper investors tracking the global supply deficit, Bonel's work at Dumbwa offers a window into how the next generation of major African copper deposits gets discovered and de-risked.

Bonel's track record was built at Barrick Gold's Lumwana mine, one of Zambia's largest copper operations. He was brought in to address years of underperformance at the asset. In roughly 24 months, he expanded Lumwana's resource from approximately 900 million tonnes at 0.5% copper to 1.62 billion tonnes at 0.5% copper — adding roughly nine million tonnes of contained copper and extending the mine's life. That expansion underpins Barrick's current plan to develop Lumwana into a "Super Pit," a large-scale, long-life mining operation. The achievement established Bonel as a geologist capable of finding economic ore where others had not.

At Midnight Sun, Bonel applies the same systematic approach that worked at Lumwana. Dumbwa and Lumwana share geological characteristics: both are basement-hosted systems with multiple stacked mineralized horizons, shallow copper mineralization starting at or near surface, and similar structural orientations. Bonel is drilling the Dumbwa target on a grid pattern — a methodical process designed to de-risk the project for potential acquisition by a major miner. Under his guidance, the deposit has been extended to over 5.3 kilometres of continuous strike (the horizontal length of the mineralized zone), supported by more than 40,000 metres of drilling, and remains open along strike.

Investors should pay attention to Bonel's work because the Zambian Copperbelt is increasingly central to global copper supply as the energy transition accelerates. His ability to identify and delineate large-scale, sediment-hosted copper deposits — the same deposit type that has made the region one of the world's most productive copper districts — gives credibility to Midnight Sun's claim that Dumbwa could reach tier-one scale. His presence on the project signals that a geologist with proven major-miner experience is applying rigorous, large-scale exploration methodology to a junior company's asset.