Modern Mining September 2015

COUNTRY FOCUS – NAMIBIA

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

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,

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).

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