Modern Mining April 2018

COPPER

Panoramic view of the Mowana open pit.

Cradle Arc ready to move into high gear at Mowana

a variety of reasons, much of the actual min- ing took place not at the Mowana site but at the Thakadu sulphide deposit, a full 70 km away by road, and plant throughput consis- tently fell short of nameplate capacity. When Thakadu was exhausted, mining moved back to Mowana for a few months but a falling cop- per price plus a range of other problems led to African Copper’s subsidiary, Messina Copper (Botswana), being placed in provisional liqui- dation in late 2015 and the mine going into care and maintenance. A majority shareholding in Mowana was subsequently purchased by Cradle Arc Investments (CAI), a subsidiary of Penmin, a company founded by van Wouw. The intention was for CAI to be reverse listed into AIM- listed Alecto Minerals, which at that stage was mainly focused on the Matala and Dunrobin

Now listed on London’s AIM, Cradle Arc, the 60 % owner of the revived Mowana copper mine in Botswana, is ready to take the asset to a new level of operation via the installation of a DMS pre-concentration circuit that would more than double the present plant capacity of 1,2 Mt/a. Modern’s Mining’s Arthur Tassell recently spoke to the company’s CEO, Kevin van Wouw, and its COO, Mark Jones, to learn more about their plans for the mine.

C ommissioned in 2008 by Afri- can Copper, which was listed in Toronto and London, Mowana – located 120 km north-west of Francistown – was built at a cost of more than US$170 million in today’s terms but never really lived up to its potential. For

22  MODERN MINING  April 2018