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July 2016
MODERN MINING
33
feature
COUNTRY FOCUS
BOTSWANA
Left:
The processing plant
at the Boseto site. Its current
capacity is 3 Mt/a but it will
be upgraded to enable it to
treat 3,65 Mt/a.
Below:
A drill site at Zone
5. During its most recent
drilling programme, Cupric
had up to 27 diamond rigs
active at Zone 5 (photo:
Khoemacau).
The underground mine at Zone 5 will involve the initial development of three declines, with a further two following once the project is expanded to 6,1 Mt/a.
ran into trouble in 2014/15 and neither is now
operational. The collapse of DCB, which owned
Boseto, created an opportunity for Cupric when
it purchased most of the company’s assets in
Botswana, including the modern Boseto con-
centrator plant, which will now be upgraded
and integrated into the Khoemacau Project.
As Tsimako explained to delegates at the
BRSC, Khoemacau’s flagship deposit at this
stage is its Zone 5 deposit (roughly 35 km from
Boseto), a strata-bound body with an average
width of 10 m, a strike length of 4,2 km, a dip
of 56 to 60 degrees and competent stratigra-
phy. Zone 5 hosts a large sulphide resource of
100,3 Mt at a grade of 1,95 % Cu and 19,9 g/t
Ag, with 43,4 Mt of this total being in the
M&I category. It is, incidentally, one of the
most intensely drilled deposits in Southern
Africa, with Cupric and its predecessors hav-
ing completed nearly 200 000 m of drilling
at the site. The intensity of the drilling can
be gauged from the fact that during its most