Modern Mining September 2017

TIN

Above: Aerial view showing Alphamin’s hilltop camp at Bisie. This photo was taken in September last year. Right: Work underway on the Bisie access road. Facing the camera is Richard Robinson, MD of Alphamin Bisie Mining SA (ABM). Bottom right: Inside the return airway adit. It recently intersected the orebody. They’ll just put one line – ‘Bisie’ – and they will be given 20 % above the going rate.” On the subject of security, Kamstra said the widespread perception that North Kivu was unstable and unsafe was out-dated. “The last security incident that we had was in 2014, and the group involved no longer really exists,” he said. He convincingly argued that the Bisie site was in fact far safer than Johannesburg and also pointed out that Alphamin – which oper- ates in the DRC through its 80,75 %-owned DRC subsidiary, Alphamin Bisie Mining SA (ABM) – was receiving excellent support from the authorities, both at national and provin- cial level. “We have a military curtain between us and the area to the east, which is mainly sparsely populated forest,” he said. Apart from Kamstra, representing Alphamin at the media round table were Charles Needham, who is the company’s Chairman, and Richard Robinson, Managing Director of ABM. Needham is very well-known in mining

September 2017  MODERN MINING  21