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September 2015
MODERN MINING
29
feature
COUNTRY FOCUS –
NAMIBIA
Mining operations are
already underway at the
giant Husab uranium
project. Seen here are some
of the Komatsu 960E-TK
(327-t capacity) electric
dump trucks that have been
deployed at the mine.
The 100 t/h jig plant
installed at the Otjo
manganese project (photo:
Shaw River Manganese).
project, an open-pit mine which uses acid
leaching and solvent extraction/electrowinning
(SX/EW) technology to produce high-quality
copper cathodes. South Africa’s LogiMan was
the EPC contractor for the plant and related
facilities.
Located 26 km by road from the his-
toric mining centre of Tsumeb, Tschudi will
exploit a proven and probable JORC reserve
of 22,7 Mt of ore at a grade of 0,95 % copper
and is expected to produce 19 Mt of ore and
waste – at a stripping ratio of 7,45 to 1 – over
its 11-year mine life.
In an operations update issued very recently,
Weatherly’s CEO, Craig Thomas, notes that the
company is maintaining its focus on Tschudi
and that the ramp up is progressing well
ahead of schedule. “I am pleased to confirm
our previous commitment that, before year
end, Weatherly will be operating a new 17 000
tonnes of copper metal per annum open-pit
copper mine in the best mining country in
Africa, producing some of the highest quality
copper cathode in the world.”
On the downside and in response to the
falling copper price, Weatherly says it will
convert its
Otjihase
and
Matchless
mines in
the Windhoek area (its Central Operations) to
a project development status “in order to pre-
pare the mines for future production of larger
volumes of copper concentrate at lower unit
costs, when market conditions improve.” Both
mines are small producers with their combined
production amounting to between 5 000 and
5 500 t/a of copper.
Several companies are involved in copper
exploration. These include not only Weatherly
but also Cupric Canyon (which is also devel-
oping the Khoemacau mine in neighbouring
Botswana), Kombat Copper, whose activities
are centered on the Kombat copper mine (no
longer producing) in northern Namibia, and
IBML with its Omitiomire project.
While it may not be a major copper producer,
Namibia does have a sophisticated smelter,
Tsumeb
. It was constructed in the early 1960s
to process concentrate from the Tsumeb copper
mine and is one of only five commercial-scale
smelters in Africa and one of only a few in the
world which is able to treat arsenic and lead
bearing copper concentrates. It is now owned
and operated by Canada’s Dundee Precious
Metals (which purchased it from Weatherly in
2010) and roughly half of its business comes
from Dundee’s Chelopech mine in Bulgaria.
Dundee is currently busy with a US$350 mil-
lion investment to expand and upgrade the
Tsumeb facilities and bring them into line with
modern environmental standards.
Another base metal which Namibia pro-
duces is zinc, with the two producers being the
Rosh Pinah
mine (purchased by Glencore from
Exxaro in 2011) and
Skorpion Zinc
(owned by
Vedanta). The two operations are both in the
far south of the country (and just 25 km apart).
An underground mine, Rosh Pinah produced
104 046 tonnes of zinc in concentrate (as well
as 22 317 tonnes of lead in concentrate) in 2014
while Skorpion Zinc, an open-pit mine allied to
a refinery, produced 102 188 tonnes of Special