Modern Mining September 2019

MANGANESE

A new manganese mine in Botswana’s future?

grid electricity. The most advanced of its pros- pects is K Hill (Kgwakwe Hill), which is located just outside the town of Kanye, which is the administrative centre of Botswana’s Southern District. The site is easily accessed as it is just 2 km or so from the Trans Kalahari highway linking together South Africa, Botswana and Namibia. Giyani has not always been focused on manga- nese. The company used to be known as Giyani Gold and owned several gold properties in South Africa’s Limpopo Province. It rebranded as Giyani Metals in 2017 to reflect its acquisition of its licences in Botswana and its move into the battery metals space. Most of the current management is rela- tively new, with both Robin Birchall, CEO, and Wajd Boubou, the company President, having being appointed in 2017. Talking to Modern Mining recently, Giyani’s Chief Geologist, Luhann Theron, said the manga- nese deposits on the company’s tenements were related to those in neighbouring South Africa. “The Kanye Basin is underlain by rocks of the Transvaal Supergroup, which hosts approximately 80 % of the

The prospects of Botswana once again getting an operating man- ganese mine have taken a major step forward with the comple- tion of a positive Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) on the K Hill project by Canadian junior Giyani Metals Corp. The company is focused on producing High Purity Electrolytic Manganese Metal (HPEMM) for the electric vehicle battery market. It hopes to submit a mine permit application to the authorities in Botswana in 2020 and break ground on the project in the same year.

B otswana is not a country which is normally associated with manganese mining but Giyani’s tenements in the Kanye Basin in fact encompass several sites where manganese mining – albeit on a small scale – was undertaken in the past including the old Kgwakwe Hill manganese mine which pro- duced from 1957 through to 1971, mostly mining manganiferous shale which was beneficiated before being sold. The operation produced about 166 000 tons of high-grade manganese (Mn) ore over its life. Remnants of the processing facilities can still be seen on site and there are also dumps of discarded material. Giyani Metals, listed on the TSX-V and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, acquired its land package in Botswana in 2017. It has an 88 to 100 % interest in the permits, which are located in close proximity to the towns of Kanye, Otse and Lobatse with access to good rail and road infrastructure, water supply and

30  MODERN MINING  September 2019