Modern Mining January 2019

FLUORSPAR

Patience and perseverance are paying off for South Africa- based fluorspar explorer and developer SepFluor as its R1,7 billion Nokeng opencast mine north of Pretoria nears completion. Not only is the current fluorspar price well in excess of the company’s initial budgets but the first year of production from the mine has already been sold, as Paul Crankshaw reports in this article. Green for go at Nokeng fluorspar years to raise. Since Modern Mining visited the site in late 2017, however, the picture on the ground has been transformed – with Group Five handing the civils construction and infra- structure and DRA Global building the plant. Some 10 000 m 3 of concrete has been cast on which to base the mine’s plant, offices and other infrastructure – and by December 2018 the installation of steelwork and equipment was essentially completed in advance of a handover around end-February 2019. Hot commission- ing of the front end of the plant was completed by the end of 2018, and the final touches were being laid to various parts of the plant.

I t was back in 2004 when SepFluor was formed and 2011 when the Nokeng proj- ect’s mining right was issued and its Social and Labour Plan approved – but it took many years of hard work before financing arrangements were finalised in 2017. “To project-finance a mine in South Africa is a difficult task on its own, and for us to have done so for a greenfields operation was even more of an achievement,” said SepFluor CEO Rob Wagner. “Doing this in a relatively obscure mineral like fluorspar – which has no defined pricing structure – certainly makes it no easier.” It was no surprise, then, that the US$130 million capital investment took two-and-a-half

About 3 MW of diesel-generated power was introduced in September 2018, as early commissioning of aspects of the plant and infrastructure was required; in December, the 14 km of newly-built, 132 kV overhead line from Eskom went live to the site. Over 100 full- time mine staff now occupy the offices on the mine, with many completing their basic and induction training. Pushing a strong local skills development agenda, Nokeng is drawing on substantial

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56 _ MODERN MINING _ January 2019