Modern Mining March 2023

company offers an integrated mining service solu tion to its extensive portfolio of long-term, mine-site based contracts. Capital’s largest Load & Haul con tract is Centamin’s Sukari Gold Mine (Egypt), to strip over 120 m tonnes of waste rock over a four-year period. The contract ramped up ahead of schedule in 2021 and has run at full capacity through 2022, with the team exceeding its previous daily produc tion record since the project commenced in the last quarter of the year. Capital is also actively tendering for additional contracts, which align with its focus on long-term and sustainable mines. MSALABS – Set for Growth MSALABS, Capital’s innovative assay and geochemi cal analysis service, provides clients across its global network, particularly in Africa and Canada, with a broad range of analytical techniques in addition to the construction and management of on-site labora tories at mine sites. Stokes explains that despite recently being just a small part of Capital’s business, MSALABS has, since its acquisition in 2019, witnessed rapid development and is today a meaningful contributor to Capital’s revenue growth. In 2022, MSALABS announced the expansion of its global partnership with Chrysos Corporation, which will see MSALABS deploy 21 Chrysos PhotonAssay TM units across the globe by 2025. According to Stokes, Chrysos PhotonAssay pro vides one of the biggest technological leaps in the mining industry in recent years, with the potential to disrupt the traditional assay industry through its mul tiple advantages over the slower, more hazardous fire assay process. “The PhotonAssay technology provides faster, safer, more accurate and environmentally-friendly analysis of gold, silver and copper by harnessing X-Ray technology,” he explains “This process pro vides clients with fully independent assay results in a matter of hours – rather than days or weeks – and, as an automated and highly technical process, it also substantially reduces the risks of human error, with the added benefit of being able to retain and retest samples.” From an environmental perspective, the use of X-rays also avoids the high temperatures and harmful chemicals such as lead and acids involved in fire assay, making it more environmentally friendly. MSALABS’s growth trajectory is underpinned over the next 2-3 years by the expanded partner ship with Chrysos. Revenue growth from MSALABS has been substantial, with initial revenues for 2019 of $3m growing tenfold – with guidance for 2022 of $30 million increasing to over $80 million per annum from 2025 onwards. The benefits of this unique technology are already being seen at mine sites including Barrick’s Bulyanhulu mine and Kibali (DRC) gold mines, as well as in the company’s com mercial labs across Africa and Canada, including

Yamoussoukro (Côte d’Ivoire) and Val d’Or (Quebec, Canada). Capital Investment In 2019, Capital began providing finance to junior miners to help fund their exploration campaigns. This highly selective strategy has seen Capital build sizeable equity stakes in some of the most exciting mining exploration projects in Africa. This has fed through into strong partnerships with these development mining companies, and generated returns for the company and its stakeholders. “Since 2019 and up to the end of 2022, Capital Investments had invested $12.5m in equity positions, the value of which has increased to almost $40m by the end of 2022, in turn generating over $50m of drilling rev enues for Capital Drilling,” says Stokes. Outlook The focus remains on servicing the leading com panies in the mining industry, in particular mine site activities on Tier 1 assets. Capital’s growth is also fuelled by the significant uplift in demand for drill ing rigs in the mining industry, following a marked reduction in exploration spending since 2012, which in turn, led to a depletion in known reserves across the commodity suite. In view of the growing impor tance of the energy transition and the global race to reach net zero emissions by 2050, metals demand for the next decade will require a huge uptick in pro duction of lithium, nickel, copper, manganese and other ‘energy transition’ metals. Currently, there are not enough proven reserves of these critical miner als to meet the extraordinary demand prompted by the electric vehicle revolution and the batteries stor age infrastructure, which consume the minerals in abundance. “Through providing all the key tools to discover, develop and build the mines of the future, and extend the life of existing mines, Capital is on course to fur ther benefit from the matrix of value-added services it provides its high quality and rapidly expanding cli ent base,” concludes Stokes. 

MSALABS is Capital’s innovative assay and geochemical analysis service.

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