Modern Mining July 2016

MINING News

Tests on Kakula ore sample deliver positive results

academic and industrial interest in kimber- lites and diamonds. Together, the 11 IKC field trips offer the opportunity to visit all of the diamond mines in Southern Africa, both primary and secondary deposits. These include the first diamond mines discovered in each of the five diamond-producing countries in the region (Orapa, Botswana; Kimberley, South Africa; Letseng, Lesotho; Murowa, Zimbabwe; and Elizabeth Bay, Namibia). Unique to this conference, delegates can visit the rough diamond sorting facilities at the Diamond Trading Company Botswana and De Beers Global Sightholder Sales in Gaborone. Full details are available from website www.11ikc.com .  The primary objective of the cur- rent drilling programme at the Kakula Discovery is to confirm and expand a thick, flat-lying, bottom-loaded zone of very high-grade copper mineralisation in the southern part of the Kakula Discovery area that has the potential to have a significant, positive impact on the Kamoa project’s future development plans. Kakula’s drill- ing programme has seven rigs operational in the field and two rigs on standby. The planned 25 000 m of drilling is scheduled to be completed later this year.  trate grade of 37 % copper. The PFS circuit was optimised on this material. Mineralogy on the Kakula sample of drill core confirmed that the material is chalcocite dominant, with lesser amounts of bornite. “These preliminary Kakula metallurgi- cal test results are positive as they indicate that the metallurgy at Kakula is very similar to that at Kansoko Sud and Centrale, and that mineralisation from these three areas can be successfully processed through the same concentrator plant,” said Vongani Nkuna, Kamoa’s Senior Process Engineer. “The next steps are to repeat and con- firm the Kakula metallurgical results by running duplicate tests at Zijin’s labora- tory and XPS’s laboratory in Canada. After this, we will look at minor changes to the planned Kamoa concentrator circuit to fur- ther improve recoveries. Once we have a resource model for the Kakula area, we will plan a rigorous sample selection and test work campaign.”

Robert Friedland, Executive Chairman of TSX-listed Ivanhoe Mines, and Lars-Eric Johansson, CEO, have announced initial metallurgical test results from a sample of drill core from ongoing exploration in the Kakula Discovery zone, in a southerly portion of the Kamoa copper project in the DRC. The tests achieved copper recoveries of 86 % and produced a copper concentrate with an extremely high grade of 53 % cop- per. The results also indicate that material from Kamoa’s Kakula and Kansoko zones could be processed through the same concentrator plant, which would yield significant operational and economic efficiencies. The Kamoa project, located approxi- mately 25 km west of the town of Kolwezi

in Katanga Province, is a joint ven- ture between Ivanhoe Mines and Zijin Mining Group Co, Ltd. The 60- km 2 Kakula Discovery zone is on the Kamoa mining licence, approximately 10 km south-west of the Kamoa project’s planned initial min- ing area at Kansoko Sud. Testing of the Kakula sample was con- ducted at Zijin’s laboratory in China, using the flowsheet developed during the Kamoa Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS). The material testedwas a composite of drill holes DD996 and DD998, assaying 4,1 % copper. As a comparison, testing of a previous develop- ment composite sample from the planned, initial mining deposit at Kamoa’s Kansoko Sud zone and the adjacent Kansoko Centrale zone, assaying 3,61 % copper, achieved an 85 % recovery and a concen-

One of the drills in operation at the Kakula Discovery area, approximately 10 km south-west of the boxcut and initial mining area at Kansoko Sud (photo: Ivanhoe Mines).

Botswana to host major kimberlite conference The 11th I nternational K imberlite Conference (11 IKC) is to be held at the Gaborone International Convention Centre in Botswana from 18-22 September 2017. International Kimberlite Conferences (IKCs) are special events which take place every four to five years, with the first IKC hav- ing being held in Cape Town in 1973. The 11 IKC will be the first IKC to be hosted by Botswana.

the country, now the Orapa mine. This anni- versary will be celebrated under the banner of ‘50 Years of Diamonds in Botswana’. The objective of this conference is to bring together geoscientists from both the academic and exploration/mining commu- nities to share their knowledge, stimulate scientific debate and to further the under- standing of the geology of kimberlites, diamonds and related subjects. The confer- ence will include oral and poster technical sessions as well as field trips in Botswana and neighbouring countries. The 11 IKC technical sessions will cover six conference scientific themes, each with a keynote, which reflect current and future

According to the organisers, the location of the 11 IKC is particularly appropriate as Botswana is currently the largest diamond producer by value worldwide and 2017 is the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the first economic diamondiferous kimberlite in

8  MODERN MINING  July 2016