Modern Mining January 2025

ADVERTORIAL TOP PROJECTS

Mintails plant site as at November 2023.

dumps left – in fact, PAR secured one of the last large-scale tailings assets,” he says. ESG As it processes the Mogale TSFs, PAR is concurrently rehabilitating the asset and has since achieved significant success, having rehabilitated a large portion of the wetlands area adjacent to the surface dumps. Initially targeting rehabilitation on 40 hectares in the first year, PAR has surpassed the target, expanding its focus more recently to rehabilitating 80 hectares. “Using labour from the local community, we have cleared a major portion of the alien vegetation and, in the process, trained locals in eradicating alien vegetation, which continues to be the impetus for job creation. In the short time that we have removed the alien vegetation, we are already noting the return of indigenous species – both in fauna and flora, while water quality is also improving.” Aside from repurposing waste material from the plant for use as infill material on existing pits, new tailing storage facilities will be developed with a significantly reduced footprint – all of which talks to PARs focus on lowering its environmental impact. “The key advantage associated with filling underground voids is the dramatic reduction in opportunities for illegal underground and pillar mining activities. Moreover, our ESG related initiatives are already realising improvements in air and water quality, and we have received

options to lift plant capacity to 1 mtpm or establish a new plant in the Soweto cluster area, which would reduce our pumping cost. As we are keen to increase our production rate sooner rather than later, we are busy undertaking a feasibility study to determine the best of the two options.” PAR anticipates completing its DFS sometime during 2025. Discussing the challenges associated with retreating tailings dumps, Hira explains that while tailings dumps offer huge upside, particularly on the back of a surging gold price, inexperienced companies, however, often fail to achieve profitability as they underestimate the initial high capital injection required and the extremely low-grades of the assets. For instance, the MTR asset has a grade of 0,3 g/t, with actual recoveries in the region of 0,15 g/t. “Tailings dump retreatment is a volumes game, as is the case with MTR, where we treat around 800 000 tons per month just to achieve production of 50 to 60 000 ozpa.” PAR’s portfolio currently sits at 45% surface mining, with the remainder being underground operations at Evander 8 Shaft and Barberton Mines. Although tailings retreatment offers several benefits, including cheap access to gold through hydraulic mining, the availability of large-scale tailings dumps is limited, with the larger assets already in the hands of local gold producers Harmony Gold and DRD Gold. “There are not many significant scale tailings

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