Modern Mining May 2019

COUNTRY FOCUS: BOTSWANA

region of 900 000 tonnes of copper a year) but the two mines will nevertheless be significant and welcome additions to the country’s mining sector. Apart from diamonds and base metals, another promising avenue of expansion for Botswana’s mining industry is coal. Currently the only coal mine in the coun- try is Morupule, located near Palapye, which produces about 2,8 Mt/a (although it reportedly plans to expand this to 8 Mt/a by 2025). It could be joined by several small to mid-tier operations over the next couple of years, with companies such as Shumba Energy, Minergy and Maatla Energy all having new mines in the pipeline. Probably the most advanced is Minergy’s 390‑Mt Masama project, located in the Mmamabula coalfield (which is essentially an extension of South Africa’s Waterberg coalfield). Listed on the Botswana Stock Exchange (with a listing on AIM planned although temporarily postponed), Minergy is run by Andre Bojé (who was the long-standing Chief Executive Officer of Wescoal until 2015). Mining has already started at Masama, which is designed to produce 1,2 Mt/a initially, and Minergy said in March this year that it expected to commission the plant in April. As a final comment on the mining scene in Botswana, the company’s reputa- tion as a mining destination remains high (despite some very vocal criticism from Nornickel of how its failed deal with BCL has been handled by the Government of Botswana). This has been confirmed by the Fraser Institute’s Annual Survey of Mining Companies 2018, which notes that “Botswana is again the highest ranked jurisdiction in Africa on policy, ranking 12th (of 83) in 2018, after ranking 21st (of 91) in 2017.” The country has had its fair share of mining setbacks in recent years but, for the most part, these have been caused by adverse market conditions combined (in some cases) with the effects of poor management. The bottom line is that exploration and mining companies can invest confidently in the country, secure in the knowledge that they are working in a mining jurisdiction that offers a generally high degree of security and transparency which is probably unequalled anywhere else in Africa. 

The Starter Project is expected to pro- duce a high-quality copper concentrate with an average grade of approximately 40 % copper and high-grade silver. This results in annual average production of 62 000 tonnes of copper and 1,9 Moz of silver over a 21-year mine life. Cupric’s short-term plan is to achieve safe, reliable production from the Starter Project. The long-term plan is to expand Khoemacau to approximately 5,8 Mt/a by constructing a new standalone process plant at Zone 5. A pre-feasibility study was completed on the Expansion Project in 2015, and the company intends advanc- ing this to a definitive feasibility study and then full engineering for this in conjunc- tion with the construction of the Starter Project. The Expansion Project is expected to produce approximately 100 000 tonnes of copper per annum. Based on current plans, the Zone 5 mine is expected to be in production in the first half of 2021. A second mine in the same area which could commission at very much the same time is the T3 open-pit project of MOD Resources which will involve a capex of US$142 million. MOD – which has recently completed a Feasibility Study (FS) on T3 – has not yet given formal approval to T3 but has said that it is targeting the start of construction in the second half of this year. According to the FS, the project will comprise an 11,5-year open-pit mine, a conventional processing plant and all associated infrastructure. It is envisaged that mining will be undertaken by a con- tractor using conventional equipment to support an average annual mining rate of 3,0 Mt/a of ore with a LOM strip ratio of 5,7 to 1. Average annual production over the life of mine is expected to be approxi- mately 28 kt of copper and 1,1 Moz of silver. However, for the first seven full years of production (between 2021 and 2028), plant throughput, feed grades and recoveries are expected to be higher than the LOM average and support copper production averaging over 30 kt/a. Between them, Khoemacau and T3 will produce just over 90 kt of copper a year initially, which is probably more than the copper production lost through the closure of BCL, Boseto and Mowana. Botswana is unlikely to ever be a major copper producer on the lines of Zambia or the DRC (which both produce in the

May 2019  MODERN MINING  39