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July 2015
MODERN MINING
25
feature
COUNTRY FOCUS –
BOTSWANA
of 1,69 g/t. The total cash cost was US$960 per
ounce (excluding royalties) and net earnings
after tax amounted to US$1,87 million. The
level of gold production was somewhat lower
than anticipated for the year (and roughly
8 000 ounces down on the 2013 figure), mainly
as a result of a SAG mill motor failure, now
resolved.
Originally the mine depended on several
pits at the Mupane site itself, 30 km south-
east of Francistown, but these have now been
largely worked out, leaving the mine reliant on
several satellite deposits such as Golden Eagle,
20 km from the Mupane mine site, stockpile
material and an underground resource below
the Tau pit, Tau being one of the original ore
bodies discovered by Byron and his team.
Galane is already well advanced with the
development of an underground mine at Tau.
Explaining the project, Byron says it will
exploit a measured and indicated resource of
128 600 ounces of gold. “The plan is to mine
this ore – which has a grade of 3 g/t and bet-
ter – at a rate of up to 30 000 tonnes/month
over the next three-and-a-half years to produce
approximately 100 000 ounces of gold. The
mining method to be used is long-hole stoping.
Access is provided by two portals at different
levels off the side of the pit which link in to
a zig-zag decline, which is still being devel-
oped down to the ore body. We expect to be
in a position to start stoping in the third quar-
ter of this year, although some ore is already
coming through from the development work.
We’ve contracted out all the underground min-
ing to Minetech, which is a Botswana-based
company. Their mining manager is Steve Venn
who has a wealth of experience in mining the
and well
Above:
The screening plant
was commissioned last year
to handle stockpiled low
grade material amounting
to 700 kt at 0,97 g/t.
Left:
The Tau pit showing
the portals – at 880 m and
840 m – to the underground
mine.
Byron – whose home is in Francistown –
forms part of a ‘hands on’ Mupane management
team that includes GM Wayne Hatton-Jones,
who has 26 years of experience in Africa, Asia
and Europe in gold mining and Processing
Manager Geoff McLoughlin, a metallurgist with
29 years of experience in operations and plant
design. Galane itself is a TSX-V listed com-
pany and is headed by Chairman Ravi Sood,
based in Canada, and CEO Nick Brodie, who
is UK-based, both with financial backgrounds.
Hatton-Jones, apart from managing Mupane,
also acts as Galane’s COO.
In Galane’s 2014 financial year (to
31 December 2014), Mupane produced just
short of 31 000 ounces of gold from total ore
milled (including some low-grade stockpile
material) of 745 000 tonnes at an average grade