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COMMENT
June 2015
MODERN MINING
3
T
he Botswana Resource Sector Con-
ference held earlier this month
(June) in Gaborone was less up-
beat than usual – I speak from ex-
perience, having attended 10 of
the twelve conferences so far held – but was
nevertheless very rewarding, with several ex-
tremely interesting presentations being given
by the likes of Debswana, Lucara Diamonds,
Petra, Gem Diamonds Botswana and Khoema-
cau Copper Mining.
On the downside, I was a bit disappointed
that there was no speaker from BCL, which has
now taken over the Tati Nickel operation from
Norilsk, or from Kimberley Diamonds, which
is working on re-opening the Lerala diamond
mine near Martin’s Drift. (Sadly, a day after
the conference ended, Kimberley Diamonds
announced an incident at the mine which
resulted in the death of a member of the care
and maintenance team.)
The conference was attended by approxi-
mately 320 delegates. Though well short of
the record attendance last year of 400 or there-
abouts, this was a very respectable figure given
present conditions in the mining industry.
The keynote address was given by Botswana’s
Minister of Minerals, Energy and Water
Resources, Onkokame Kitso Mokaila, who has
held the position since 2012. It was good to see
that he stayed on after his presentation, listen-
ing intently to many of the other speakers.
I suppose if I had to single out one project as
being of particular significance it would be the
new Khoemacau copper mine of Cupric Canyon
Capital subsidiary Khoemacau Copper Mining.
This is the only real big mining project on the
immediate horizon in Botswana and is due to go
into construction next year. Johannes Tsimako,
Khoemacau Copper Mining’s Regional Manager,
gave an update on the project and explained
it could well become a bigger enterprise than
originally envisaged, with consideration being
given to a 5,5 Mt/a operation – a very signifi-
cant increase on the 3,6 Mt/a production rate
proposed in the existing mine plan.
The neighbouring Boseto operation devel-
oped by Discovery Metals is now on care and
maintenance and Cupric has put in an offer
for Discovery’s assets in Botswana, which
include a modern processing plant which has
seen less than three years of use. If successful
(as I suspect it will be), the bid could change
Khoemacau’s present plans to build a new con-
centrator at its Zone 5 site.
Khoemacau Copper Mining, incidentally,
had a very strong presence at the conference,
with its contingent of delegates being led by
Sam Rasmussen, who heads Cupric Africa,
mandated to manage and grow Cupric Canyon’s
copper interests in this part of the world. Sam,
like many of his colleagues within Cupric, is
a veteran of Phelps Dodge and its successor,
Freeport McMoRan, and his African experi-
ence has included a stint as GM of the Tenke
Fungurume copper mine in the DRC.
A company coming up fast behind
Khoemacau is Australia’s MOD Resources,
which is the second largest landholder within
Botswana’s Kalarai Copperbelt. I chatted to
Jacques Janse van Rensburg, the company’s
GM Exploration (Africa), at the conference
and he was highly positive about MOD’s
prospects of developing an underground
mine at its Mahumo deposit. Jacques is an
expert on the Kalahari Copperbelt and prior
to joining MOD at the end of 2011 was Project
Manager for Hana Mining, the predecessor of
Khoemacau Copper Mining (Cupric acquired
Hana in 2012).
The biggest player in mining in Botswana
is, of course, Debswana and at past confer-
ences it has not always been represented by
its top executives. This year was different with
its presentation being given by its MD, Balisi
Bonyongo. Although he has only held this
position since the beginning of last year (when
he took over from James Gowans), he has an
unparalleled knowledge of the group, having
joined it more than 20 years ago. He gave an
exceptionally clear exposition of Debswana’s
strategy which we’ll look at in more detail in
next month’s issue.
There was no presentation on gold at the
conference but I did bump into my old friend,
Charles Byron, who is Chief Geologist and also
a Director of Galane Gold, which owns the
Mupane gold mine near Francistown. Charles
gave me an update on the Mupane operation
and also discussed Galane’s proposed acquisi-
tion of Galaxy Gold, which owns assets in the
Barberton greenstone belt in South Africa.
Finally, I very much enjoyed the presenta-
tion given by an old acquaintance of mine, Dr
Leon Daniels, who I first met nearly 15 years
ago when he was running a tiny gold operation
known as Somerset, north of Francistown. He
is actually a diamond rather than a gold expert
and he gave a typically provocative talk on dia-
mond exploration, which I’ll be hoping to cover
in more detail next month.
Arthur Tassell
Resource sector
under
the spotlight
in
Gaborone
Cupric is one of
several bidders
for Discovery’s
assets in
Botswana, which
include a modern
processing plant
which has seen
less than three
years of use.