Modern Mining January 2018

TOP PROJECTS

In our regular Top Mining Projects feature we look at projects distinguished by their size, innovation or pioneering spirit. This year we have identified five that meet these criteria, three of them in South Africa, one in the north-east of the DRC and one in West Africa. The commodities covered are gold, tin, diamonds and platinum. AFRICA’S TOP MINING PROJECTS

O ur gold project is the Ity CIL project of TSX-listed Endeavour Mining in Côte d’Ivoire, which will see Ity transitioning from being a heap leach mine with a limited remaining life to a large-scale CIL operation capable of producing up to 235 000 ounces of gold a year over a mine life of at least 14 years. The project, which builds on the huge exploration success Endeavour has enjoyed at Ity, is involving an investment of just over US$400 million. Endeavour recently commissioned its Houndé mine in Burkina Faso two months early and well within budget and has transi- tioned the Houndé construction team to the Ity site. The 4 Mt/a Ity plant will be similar in design to the Houndé facility, with identical ball and mill designs. Our second ‘top project’ is the Bisie tin mine in the DRC’s North Kivu Province, which will exploit the world’s richest tin deposit. We cov- ered Bisie a year ago in our Top Projects feature and have included it again this year in recog- nition of the remarkable progress that project developer Alphamin has made over the past 12 months. Modern Mining recently visited the site and was able to view for itself the strides Alphamin’s team has made. Work on the underground mine is well advanced, construction of the plant is now getting underway and Alphamin is expect- ing full commercial production to be achieved towards the end of next year. From a technical perspective, Bisie is a rea- sonably straightforward undertaking. The real challenge for Alphamin has been the difficult logistics presented by the mine’s remote loca- tion, which it believes it has now mastered. Raising the money to build Bisie has also been no easy task, given the perception that investors have of North Kivu, one of the most turbulent of the DRC’s provinces. Nevertheless, here again Alphamin has been successful and, as of this writing, was close to completing its funding. Moving to South Africa, the first of the two diamond projects we cover is the Venetia Underground Project (VUP) of De Beers, which

is costing approximately US$2 billion. Modern Mining was recently on site and interviewed both Venetia’s GM, Gerrie Nortje, and Christoff Kühn, Head of the VUP, to get an update on the project. Apart from its size, an interesting feature of the VUP is the use – for the first time in South Africa – of the Canadian shaft-sinking method on the two plus 1 km deep vertical shafts that the project requires. Interestingly, once the VUP is commissioned, it will be one of the most mechanised diamond mining operations in the world, with the decision having been taken to deploy autonomous trackless mobile machin- ery (TMM) in the mine. Our second diamond project is the recently commissioned processing plant at Petra’s Cullinan mine near Pretoria, which replaces an out-dated and sprawling facility dating back to the late 1940s. The new 6 Mt/a facility has a very compact footprint, features an energy- and water-efficient design and incorporates relatively new technologies such as X-ray lumi- nescence (XRL) and autogenous milling. The emphasis in the new plant is on com- minution through attrition rather than the high-impact crushing used in the past which brought with it the risk of breaking the large gemstones for which Cullinan is renowned. Petra expects the plant to increase the lib- eration of diamonds across the total spectrum leading to a grade improvement of about 10 %. Our final project is Northam’s Booysendal South mine on the Eastern Limb of the Bushveld Complex. This is a substantial development which will have the capacity to produce up to 300 000 oz of refined plati- num group metals yearly, increasing the total production of the Booysendal complex to approximately half-a-million ounces a year. The Booysendal South mine design is based on that of its sister operation at Booysendal North, and will comprise two UG2 bord-and- pillar mining modules accessed via a single portal system – as well as a Merensky module. Mechanised mining systems will be employed, contributing both to enhanced on-mine safety as well as cost effectiveness. 

The real challenge for Alphamin has been the difficult logistics presented by the mine’s remote location, which it believes it has nowmastered.

Top projects

January 2018  MODERN MINING  29