Modern Mining April 2016

MINING News

Realising possibilities...

BlueRock busy with a review of its mining strategy In an operational update released at the end of March, AIM-listed BlueRock Diamonds notes that in January this year it appointed VBKOM, a specialist mining consultancy, to join its existing manage- ment team and, in particular, to review BlueRock’s mining strategy and produce a life of mine plan. BlueRock is mining at Kareevlei, located 100 km north-west of Kimberley in the Northern Cape. The property hosts five confirmed kimberlites. The review process is under way and BlueRock expects that it will be finalised over the next couple of months. In addition, the company has started conducting a strategic review covering all operations as its business expands. The first action of this review is to appoint an experienced mine manager to run operations. The combined throughput of the Kareevlei plant and the Diacar plant is now in excess of 20 000 tonnes per month – up from 14 000 tonnes as reported in December. (Diacar Mining and Plant Hire acts as a sub-contractor and has established a second processing plant at the Kareevlei site in order to process kimberlite of over 70 mm in size). The water shortages faced during the very dry summer have been alleviated by rain, says BlueRock, and a change in processing which enables the mine to utilise water more efficiently. “We are pleased with the ability of Kareevlei to process higher vol- umes of kimberlite but continue to make adjustments to our plant set up to achieve more processing efficiencies,” says BlueRock. “During the first quarter our recovery ran at slightly under 2 cpht. Whilst this is below the expected average grade as set out in the CPR published at the time of our admission to AIM, limited testing of our tailings has shown that our plant is not recovering a significant quantity of diamonds and that the DMS as it is currently set up is unable to pro- cess effectively the increased throughput. The board, together with VBKOM and other industry experts, are currently deciding how best to resolve this issue.” The company adds that Diacar, whilst operating at the expected levels of throughput, is also recovering at lower than expected rates. Diacar is currently in the process of adding a DMS to its processing unit and it is anticipated that this will improve its recovery grades.  Subsequent to December 31, 2015, the company prepared a pre- liminary new Otjikoto Life of Mine (LOM) plan that incorporated a revised geological and grade model for the Otjikoto deposit as well as preliminary modelling and scheduling of the Wolfshag zone into the overall Otjikoto Life of Mine plan. The preliminary LOM plan indicates that over the four years 2016-2019, gold production is expected to average 170 000 ounces per year. Production for the years 2020 and beyond will vary depending on the conversion of Wolfshag under- ground and open-pit resources to reserves and bringing a potential underground mine into production on schedule. Otjikoto is forecast to produce between 160 000 and 170 000 ounces of gold in 2016 at a cash operating cost of approximately US$400 to US$440 per ounce.  net cash inflow of US$7,1 million for pre-commercial sales proceeds offset by pre-commercial production costs, and mine development costs of US$31,1 million (including cash payments of US$14,4 million for capital costs which were incurred and accrued in 2014).

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April 2016  MODERN MINING  15

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