Modern Mining

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March 2016 MODERN MINING11
MINING News
Tanzanian miner appoints
Chief Operating Officer
LSE-listed Acacia, which owns and oper-
ates three gold mines in Tanzania, has
announced the appointment of Mark
Morcombe as Chief Operating Officer
(COO). He is a professional Mining Engineer
with more than 20 years of gold industry
experience, primarily in the underground
mining environment, and has operated
across the African continent for a number
of years.
Before joining Acacia, Morcombe
was Senior Vice President for AngloGold
Ashanti at the Obuasi gold mine in Ghana,
a position he held from September 2012.
Prior to this he was Senior Vice President,
Planning and Business Development for
AngloGold Ashanti’s Continental Africa
Region, supportingmines inMali, Namibia,
Tanzania, the DRC, Guinea and Ghana. He
has previously held various roles in Africa
with Gold Fields, having started his career
in Australia. 
Premier African Minerals Limited (Premier),
whose shares are traded on AIM and which
holds a 49 % interest in the RHA tungsten mine
(RHA) in north-west Zimbabwe, says that an
internal study prepared by RHA with input pro-
vided by Whaleside Shaft Sinkers Zimbabwe
supports its board’s decision to investigate and
accelerate underground development at RHA.
RHA and Whaleside, the appointed min-
ing contractor at RHA, are in the process of
implementing the necessary works to allow
underground mining operations, at pres-
ent limited to the 926 ‘adit’ access level, to be
extended to the 870 and 856 lower levels.
RHA’s implementation plan is based on
targeting the processing of approximately
32 000 tonnes of run of mine ore at an average
grade of 6,20 kg/t (based on the historic non-
compliant resource) to produce 249 tonnes of
concentrate at 63 % WO3 (tungsten trioxide)
over a six-month period from February 2016.
In addition, Premier says that during this
period it will consider test work on open-pit ore
and possible implementation of XRT-based ore
RHA transitions to underground mining
WIRTGEN_South Africa_CAMPAIGN_6_BRANDS.indd 1 08.03.16 18:05
upgrading. Underground development
will continue to allow extraction from
the compliant resource situated below
the open-pit operations in the future.
The capital cost for the underground
operations is estimated at US$406 000.
Mining on the 926 level began in
November 2015 and will continue until
the installation and commissioning of
production infrastructure on the 870
level is completed.
George Roach, Premier’s CEO, com-
mented: “RHA was always planned, in
the longer term, to be an underground
mine. Unforeseen developments dur-
ing the initial open-pit operations led
the company to accelerate the move
to underground mining. This change
in strategy has resulted in the need
to finance company overheads for an
extended period without recourse to
cash flow generated from the open
pit and finance substantial additional
debt generated by RHA.” 