Modern Mining March 2016

MINING News

RHA transitions to underground mining

Tanzanian miner appoints Chief Operating Officer LSE-listed Acacia, which owns and oper- ates three gold mines in Tanzania, has announced the appointment of Mark Morcombe as Chief Operating Officer (COO). He is a professional Mining Engineer with more than 20 years of gold industry experience, primarily in the underground mining environment, and has operated across the African continent for a number of years. Before joining Acacia, Morcombe was Senior Vice President for AngloGold Ashanti at the Obuasi gold mine in Ghana, a position he held from September 2012. Prior to this he was Senior Vice President, Planning and Business Development for AngloGold Ashanti’s Continental Africa Region, supportingmines inMali, Namibia, Tanzania, the DRC, Guinea and Ghana. He has previously held various roles in Africa with Gold Fields, having started his career in Australia. 

Premier African Minerals Limited (Premier), whose shares are traded on AIM and which holds a 49 % interest in the RHA tungsten mine (RHA) in north-west Zimbabwe, says that an internal study prepared by RHA with input pro- vided by Whaleside Shaft Sinkers Zimbabwe supports its board’s decision to investigate and accelerate underground development at RHA. RHA and Whaleside, the appointed min- ing contractor at RHA, are in the process of implementing the necessary works to allow underground mining operations, at pres- ent limited to the 926 ‘adit’ access level, to be extended to the 870 and 856 lower levels. RHA’s implementation plan is based on targeting the processing of approximately 32 000 tonnes of run of mine ore at an average grade of 6,20 kg/t (based on the historic non- compliant resource) to produce 249 tonnes of concentrate at 63 % WO 3 (tungsten trioxide) over a six-month period from February 2016. In addition, Premier says that during this period it will consider test work on open-pit ore and possible implementation of XRT-based ore

upgrading. Underground development will continue to allow extraction from the compliant resource situated below the open-pit operations in the future. The capital cost for the underground operations is estimated at US$406 000. Mining on the 926 level began in November 2015 and will continue until the installation and commissioning of production infrastructure on the 870 level is completed. George Roach, Premier’s CEO, com- mented: “RHA was always planned, in the longer term, to be an underground mine. Unforeseen developments dur- ing the initial open-pit operations led the company to accelerate the move to underground mining. This change in strategy has resulted in the need to finance company overheads for an extended period without recourse to cash flow generated from the open pit and finance substantial additional debt generated by RHA.” 

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