Modern Mining July 2019

MINING News

The Kayelekera uraniummine during its days of operation (photo: Paladin Energy).

Hylea Metals to acquire Kayelekera uraniummine tion plant. The operation is currently on care and maintenance with all assets – including a 1,5 Mt/a processing facility – maintained in good standing.

to include around 91 000 tonnes at an aver- age grade of 2,27 g/t gold, equating to approximately 6 500 oz of contained gold with a recovery of 73 %. The total plant feed from the mining operation and the Akrokeri Tailings will be approximately 2,26 Mt with an average grade of 1,2 g/t gold, giving total ounces to the plant of approximately 88 500 oz. The heap leach facility will recover, in total, approximately 72 000 oz, giving an overall Life of Mine (LoM) recovery of approximately 81 %. The LoM is estimated at five years with an average all-in cost, that includes capital plus cash costs, of US$852/oz.  commercial production being achieved in 2010. In February 2014, Paladin placed Kayelekera on care and maintenance due to the low uranium pricing. Internal stud- ies determined that an improved uranium market would provide an opportunity for Kayelekera to restart and again produce uranium from its remaining resource.  optimistic about the global uranium mar- ket and the outlook for firmer pricing,” said HCO Managing Director Simon Andrew. Kayelekera is located in northern Malawi, 52 km west (by road) of the town of Karonga. Paladin permitted, con- structed, commissioned and operated Kayelekera, designed to produce 3,3 Mlb/a of U 3 O 8 , between 2007 and 2014, with

ASX-listed Hylea Metals Limited (HCO) has entered into an agreement with ASX-listed Paladin Energy to acquire a 65 % interest in the Kayelekera uranium project in Malawi. The remaining 35 % is held by HCO’s joint venture partner Chichewa (20 %) and the Government of Malawi (15 % ). HCO will have an option to acquire a further 20 % interest in Kayelekera from Chichewa Kayelekera hosts a high grade resource with an existing open-pit mine and has demonstrated excellent metallurgical recoveries (87,5 %), having historically pro- duced over 10,9 MIb of uranium between 2009 and 2014. Significant infrastructure is already in place including a resin-in-pulp extrac-

Homase Trend, either side of the previously mined Homase pit, to generate cash flows to fund the further development of AKHM. The DEP estimates that the mine- able resource from the proposed mine is approximately 82 000 oz of contained gold in oxide ore with a projected 82 % recovery from 2,17 Mt of oxide ore at an average grade of 1,2 g/t gold. This mineable resource is part of the AKHM JORC resource of 602 000 oz. Goldstone is proposing to also place tail- ings from the former Akrokeri underground mine (Akrokeri Tailings), which it estimates In FY-2013, the open-pit mine produced 1,07 Mt of ore at an average grade of 1 350 ppm U 3 O 8 with an annualised strip- ping ratio of 3:1. “The acquisition of 65 % of Kayelekera is an excellent opportunity for HCO. Kayelekera is a world-class uranium asset that has produced over 10,9 MIb of ura- nium and represents an opportunity to use the past production information to re- engineer certain mining and processing processes in order to reduce the overall capex and opex of the operations. We are

Goldstone plans low-cost mining operation AIM-listed Goldstone Resources has submit- ted the results of the Definitive Economic Plan (DEP) prepared for its Akrokeri-Homase gold project (AKHM) in Ghana to the GhanaianMinerals Commission for its review and approval. This is an important step as it demonstrates the viability for a low-costmin- ing operation, as the company seeks tomove rapidly towards establishing its first operat- ing mine within the Homase Trend.

The DEP sets out the basis for a low-cost (US$6,5 million capex) heap leach process- ing facility to process material from three satellite open pits lying along the known

10  MODERN MINING  July 2019