Khoemacau Copper Mining forges ahead with starter project
Correspondent | Friday June 12, 2020 11:56
The mine is located on the highly prospective Kalahari Copper Belt that lies in North Western Botswana.
Khoemacau secured funding to the tune of P7.63 billion (US$650 million) in Q2 2019 towards the mine and infrastructure development, as well as other Project related costs.
The Zone 5 Mine, with 20 or more years expected operating life, will see the simultaneous development of three underground mines, transportation of the ore 35km to the Boseto processing plant.
The facility is being upgraded to produce 155,000 to 165,000t of high-grade, 40% copper concentrate a year, containing approximately 60,000 to 65,000t of payable copper and 1.9 million oz of payable silver. The Zone 5 orebody boasts a 92 million tonne resource at an in-situ grade of 2.11% copper and 21.8g/t silver.
The key construction work, to enable mining of the copper and silver ore, involved the development of three boxcuts, situated in 40m or more of sand cover with around 1.3 million cubic metres of material to be excavated from each boxcut.
The work was completed on target with the boxcuts progressively handed over to Barminco Mining Services Botswana, a subsidiary of the Perenti Group Ltd, to commence mining from Q1 2020. The underground mining is advancing well with significant milestones achieved to date including:
l All three mines; Central, North and South, are now well into development with the Khoemacau Mining Team and Barminco achieving the significant milestone of 1,600m of underground mining development in late May 2020.
l State of the Art Barminco mechanised underground mining training centre in Maun. The centre enables Barminco to induct all the new employees and then put them through rigorous training in a simulated underground environment where they learn skills on the mechanised underground mining equipment such as drills, loaders and trucks, and also key aspects of operations, maintenance and underground safety.
In line with the Company’s strategic intent which is “We are building a legacy”, and a large scale training and development programme for Batswana workforce is being put in place to ensure the localisation obligations of the Company will be met.
Khoemacau has also made good progress on surface infrastructure such as the 40km water pipeline to Zone 5, which was commissioned in Q1 2020 and 144 single rooms and two ablution blocks were completed at the permanent mine camp.
It is anticipated that other major infrastructure items such as the mine workshops, mine administration buildings, 35km access and haulage roads, 50km overhead powerline and the rest of the accommodation will be commissioned from Q3 of 2020 onwards. The upgrading and commissioning of the Boseto processing plant will be completed during the second quarter of 2021.
The mining and construction workforce on site peaked at more than 2,300 in late March with more than 92% Batswana employed in the mining, construction and Company operations teams. The Starter Project surpassed in excess of two million Lost Time Injury Free man hours in April 2020.
Khoemacau takes the health and safety of its employees and contractors seriously. The Company proactively monitored the events and developments of the COVID-19 pandemic as they unfolded and working in conjunction with the North West District Health Management Team developed and implemented procedures for managing through the COVID-19 pandemic.
This preparedness enabled Khoemacau, declared an “Essential Service” under the Botswana Statutory Instrument No.61 of 2020, Emergency Powers ACT (Cap. 22:04), Emergency Powers (COVID-19) Regulations 2020, to successfully continue operations on its sites, albeit at reduced capacity, throughout the Botswana COVID-19 lockdown.
Khoemacau wishes to take this opportunity to thank the Botswana Government for responding swiftly towards containment of the virus and to thank everyone of our employees who have so far complied with all health and safety protocols as pronounced by the Government and implemented on site from time to time.
In support of the Government’s response to the pandemic and our local communities during these difficult times, Khoemacau and its contractors donated food hampers worth P215, 000 to the national COVID - 19 Relief Fund (North West District).
It is important to note that the mine has not yet started ore production as it is still developing the declines and other underground infrastructure.
It is, however, anticipated that ore mining will begin in Q4 2020 and some 100,000 tonnes of this ore would be available on stockpile and on track for treatment in Q1 2021. The first concentrate shipment to overseas smelters and refineries is still planned for mid-2021.
Looking beyond the “Starter Project”, Khoemacau is also pursuing exploration at its Mango, Zeta North East and Zone 5 North resources which offer approximately 74 million tonnes in excess of 2.4 percent copper equivalent resources.
The Expansion Project studies are targeting to increase the annual output of the Khoemacau operations to 150,000 tonnes of payable copper and 5 million ounces of payable silver.
A range of additional targets, from early ore-grade discovery drill holes, to geophysical and geochemical anomalies, are being explored to feed the Khoemacau project pipeline beyond the Expansion Project. (Issued to Mmegi by Khoemacau Copper Mining)