Modern Mining January 2019

ZINC

poised for expansion high-profile appointments within the group, eventually being appointed as CFO for Anglo Thermal Coal.

A panoramic view of the Gamsberg project, showing the processing plant and the Gamsberg inselberg (which hosts the Gamsberg deposit) in the background.

“leveraging our world-class large project devel- opment expertise.” Agarwal has been as good as his word and Vedanta has moved fast to develop Gamsberg. In 2014 a feasibility study was completed and Phase I of the project approved. The first blast on site took place in July 2015, less than four years after VZI acquired the asset, and the first ore was produced in January 2018 (after a mas- sive pre-stripping exercise). Construction of the processing plant started in earnest in early 2017 and by September 2018 the facility was commissioning. An interesting point is that the project orig- inally had a price tag of US$600 million. By late 2015 the zinc price was weakening and VZI might have been forgiven at this point if it had decided to shelve or postpone the proj- ect. Instead, it re-engineered and restructured Gamsberg Phase I to make it more affordable. These measures – plus a favourable exchange rate environment and a decision to move to contractor mining – allowed the cost to be cut by an astonishing US$200 million. Addressing the media group, Satish Kumar,

A feasibility study on the proposed smelter/ refinery is already underway and will also give an indication of whether VZI’s refinery at the Skorpion Zinc mine in southern Namibia can be utilised to work in conjunction with the proposed Gamsberg facility. VZI currently estimates that the Gamsberg smelter/refin- ery would cost between US$700 million and US$800 million to build and would require 200 MW of additional power. Gamsberg, of course, is not a new discovery but it has taken VZI to finally realise its poten- tial. The deposit was first identified in the early 1970s by O’Okiep Copper Company, then part of Newmont and Gold Fields, and later passed into the hands of Anglo American. Vedanta acquired Black Mountain Mining (BMM) from Anglo American in 2011, with one of the main attractions of the deal being the Gamsberg property. At the time of the transaction, Anil Agarwal, Vedanta’s Chairman, said that the group would rapidly develop Gamsberg

Top projects

January 2019 _ MODERN MINING _ 49