September 2010
Gold mining takes priority in this issue of Modern Mining with no less than four articles covering the activities of the gold mining sector. Our cover story focuses on Zimbabwe's historic Turk mine near Bulawayo, where production is currently being expanded. With power supply in Zimbabwe currently being highly unreliable, the mine has now installed 3 MVA of standby power (supplied by Barloword Power) to allow the mine to continue operating during power cuts.
 Further north in Africa, in south-western Tanzania, we look at the proposed new mine - to be known as the ‘New Luika Gold Mine - that junior company Shanta Gold is to build in the Lupa goldfield. We also have two articles on South African gold operations - one dealing with Barberton Mines, which is producing roughly 100 000 ounces of gold a year from the generally difficult ores of the Barberton Greenstone Belt, and the other with the Ergo tailings retreatment operation on the eastern Witwatersrand, originally conceived and established more than three decades ago by Anglo American and now revived by DRDGOLD.
 Coal is featured in an article on Keaton Energy's first big coal mine - Vanggatfontein near Delmas - while platinum is covered in an article on the Styldrift project, currently being developed by Royal Bafokeng Platinum (RB Plats) Vanggatfontein will be an opencast operation producing two distinct products - high-quality metallurgical coal and steam coal. The steam coal will all go to Eskom in terms of a recently signed offtake agreement. Styldrift, for its part, will be an underground mine initially exploiting the Merensky Reef. As at the time of writing, Shaft Sinkers was on the point of starting sinking work on the plus-700 m deep vertical shafts that the project will need. The EPCM contractor for the project is TWP Projects. Styldrift, located within sight of the entrance to Sun City, will reach full production in 2017.
| This issue of Modern Mining is available for interactive "page-flip" viewing. You'll need the latest Flash Plugin, and an ADSL or 3G internet connection to view the magazine smoothly. | You need to register with Crown Publications to read the online version of this magazine. | | LoginRegister |
Barberton Mines upbeat on its future prospects There has been a great deal of attention focused on the Barberton Greenstone Belt (BGB) of late with both Galaxy Gold and Vantage Goldfields working on new projects in the Barberton area. Nevertheless, the biggest operation in the BGB is Barberton Mines (Pty) Limited, which operates the successful Fairview, Consort and Sheba mines, all within close proximity of each other and with a history of production dating back to the 1880s. Shanta's new mine will revive Lupa goldfield The new mine AIM-listed Shanta Gold is planning to build in Tanzania's Lupa goldfield is noteworthy as all the other new mines in the country established over roughly the past decade are located in the Lake Victoria goldfield much further north. In its heyday in the 1940s and 50s, however, the Lupa goldfield was just as important to Tanzania (then Tanganyika) as the Lake Victoria goldfield and hosted a number a number of mines, all of them small in scale by modern standards. The Shanta mine - or New Luika, as it will be known - will produce an average of 28 400 ounces a year over an 11-year life. Electra Mining - will it be one of the best yet? Although some well-known names - Barloworld, Komatsu and Sandvik, for example - will be missing from this year's show (to be held from 4 - 8 October at Nasrec in Johannesburg), it nevertheless looks set to be a bumper event with more than 730 exhibitors signed up and floor space sold out. High-grade starter pit identified at Ghanzi Canadian junior Hana Mining has identified a potential high-grade starter pit within its Ghanzi copper/silver project in north-western Botswana. The company is currently working on a Preliminary Economic Assessment of the project, which it envisages will be commissioned in 2014. Navachab a pioneer in pit slope management Part of the reason why AngloGold Ashanti's Navachab gold mine has been a success throughout its roughly 20-year life is the attention paid to pit slope management, which has allowed the pit walls to be steeper than they might otherwise have been, thus allowing optimal exploitation of the ore resource. The mine, which is advised by SRK on this aspect of its operations, is a pioneer in this field.
|
  
|
