Modern Mining June 2015

COMMENT

Resource sector under the spotlight in Gaborone

T he Botswana Resource Sector Con- ference held earlier this month (June) in Gaborone was less up- beat than usual – I speak from ex- perience, having attended 10 of the twelve conferences so far held – but was nevertheless very rewarding, with several ex- tremely interesting presentations being given by the likes of Debswana, Lucara Diamonds, Petra, Gem Diamonds Botswana and Khoema- cau Copper Mining. On the downside, I was a bit disappointed that there was no speaker from BCL, which has now taken over the Tati Nickel operation from Norilsk, or from Kimberley Diamonds, which is working on re-opening the Lerala diamond mine near Martin’s Drift. (Sadly, a day after the conference ended, Kimberley Diamonds announced an incident at the mine which resulted in the death of a member of the care and maintenance team.) The conference was attended by approxi- mately 320 delegates. Though well short of the record attendance last year of 400 or there- abouts, this was a very respectable figure given present conditions in the mining industry. The keynote address was given by Botswana’s Minister of Minerals, Energy and Water Resources, Onkokame Kitso Mokaila, who has held the position since 2012. It was good to see that he stayed on after his presentation, listen- ing intently to many of the other speakers. I suppose if I had to single out one project as being of particular significance it would be the new Khoemacau copper mine of Cupric Canyon Capital subsidiary Khoemacau Copper Mining. This is the only real big mining project on the immediate horizon in Botswana and is due to go into construction next year. Johannes Tsimako, Khoemacau Copper Mining’s Regional Manager, gave an update on the project and explained it could well become a bigger enterprise than originally envisaged, with consideration being given to a 5,5 Mt/a operation – a very signifi- cant increase on the 3,6 Mt/a production rate proposed in the existing mine plan. The neighbouring Boseto operation devel- oped by Discovery Metals is now on care and maintenance and Cupric has put in an offer for Discovery’s assets in Botswana, which include a modern processing plant which has seen less than three years of use. If successful (as I suspect it will be), the bid could change Khoemacau’s present plans to build a new con- centrator at its Zone 5 site. Khoemacau Copper Mining, incidentally,

had a very strong presence at the conference, with its contingent of delegates being led by Sam Rasmussen, who heads Cupric Africa, mandated to manage and grow Cupric Canyon’s copper interests in this part of the world. Sam, like many of his colleagues within Cupric, is a veteran of Phelps Dodge and its successor, Freeport McMoRan, and his African experi- ence has included a stint as GM of the Tenke Fungurume copper mine in the DRC. A company coming up fast behind Khoemacau is Australia’s MOD Resources, which is the second largest landholder within Botswana’s Kalarai Copperbelt. I chatted to Jacques Janse van Rensburg, the company’s GM Exploration (Africa), at the conference and he was highly positive about MOD’s prospects of developing an underground mine at its Mahumo deposit. Jacques is an expert on the Kalahari Copperbelt and prior to joining MOD at the end of 2011 was Project Manager for Hana Mining, the predecessor of Khoemacau Copper Mining (Cupric acquired Hana in 2012). The biggest player in mining in Botswana is, of course, Debswana and at past confer- ences it has not always been represented by its top executives. This year was different with its presentation being given by its MD, Balisi Bonyongo. Although he has only held this position since the beginning of last year (when he took over from James Gowans), he has an unparalleled knowledge of the group, having joined it more than 20 years ago. He gave an exceptionally clear exposition of Debswana’s strategy which we’ll look at in more detail in next month’s issue. There was no presentation on gold at the conference but I did bump into my old friend, Charles Byron, who is Chief Geologist and also a Director of Galane Gold, which owns the Mupane gold mine near Francistown. Charles gave me an update on the Mupane operation and also discussed Galane’s proposed acquisi- tion of Galaxy Gold, which owns assets in the Barberton greenstone belt in South Africa. Finally, I very much enjoyed the presenta- tion given by an old acquaintance of mine, Dr Leon Daniels, who I first met nearly 15 years ago when he was running a tiny gold operation known as Somerset, north of Francistown. He is actually a diamond rather than a gold expert and he gave a typically provocative talk on dia- mond exploration, which I’ll be hoping to cover in more detail next month. Arthur Tassell

Cupric is one of several bidders for Discovery’s assets in Botswana, which include a modern processing plant which has seen less than three years of use.

June 2015  MODERN MINING  3