Modern Mining July 2016

COUNTRY FOCUS BOTSWANA

Khoemacau outlines its vision for the Kalahari Copperbelt

One of the few bright spots in the current Southern African mining scene are the plans of Khoemacau Copper Mining (Khoemacau) to build a substantial underground copper mine in the Kalahari Copperbelt of Botswana. An update on the project was given at the recent Botswana Resource Sector Conference (BRSC) by Johannes Tsimako, Khoemacau’s Country Manager, who told the delegates that the ‘Starter Project’ – with a capacity of 50 000 t/a of copper – would enter construction next year with commissioning being achieved in the first half of 2019. He noted that the project represented a “district scale opportunity” which was scalable up to 150 000 t/a of copper.

pric Africa team is headed by Sam Rasmus- sen, based in Johannesburg, who has many years of copper mining experience including in the DRC (where he managed the Tenke Fun- gurume mine in Katanga) and Chile. As CEO of Cupric Africa, he has overall responsibil- ity for the Khoemacau Project, which Cupric acquired when it purchased Canadian junior Hana Mining in 2013. Cupric Africa and Khoemacau had a large contingent – 16 people – at the BRSC, includ- ing Rasmussen and Project Director Rob Dey, signifying its commitment to the project, which is expected to involve an initial capex of US$341 million. It will add diversification to Botswana’s mining industry and will rank as the country’s first dedicated underground cop- per mine (if one ignores the BCL operation in Selebi-Phikwe, which does produce some cop- per but is primarily seen as a nickel producer). Of course, Botswana did have two other cop- per mining operations until recently, namely the Mowana open-pit mine of African Copper near Francistown and the Boseto open-pit mine of Discovery Copper Botswana (DCB) in the Kalahari Copperbelt, but both operations

K hoemacau is the Botswana sub- sidiary of US-based Cupric Can- yon Capital, a company managed by a group of experienced copper mining industry veterans who are backed by Global Natural Resource Invest- ments (formerly the Barclays Natural Resource Investments private equity business). The Cu-

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32  MODERN MINING  July 2016