HARMONY Gold said this week it will recapitalise and rethink how to mine its recently acquired 41,000 ton a year CSA copper mine in Australia – a process that could take up to two years.
“It could be up to two years or even more potentially to de-risk and de-bottleneck the mine,” Beyers Nel, CEO of Harmony Gold told Reuters on the sidelines of the Africa Mining Indaba conference. “It is a mine that is constrained at the moment. It is a mine that requires a bit of a rethink and recapitalisation.”
The two core issues that need fixing are insufficient ventilation and limited mining flexibility due to inadequate insulation, he said.
Harmony is reviewing short‑term projects to improve ventilation and enable deeper mining, said Reuters. The company plans to give the first formal production outlook for the mine when it reports half‑year results in March, covering the six months from January to June.
“We’re not expecting it to shoot the lights out. I mean, the mine is constrained,” Nel told the newswire.
The mine was acquired in the $1.01bn accquisition of MAC Copper, a New York-listed company, finalised in October. The deal marked “a significant milestone” for the group as it sought to become “a global gold and copper producer”, Nel said at the time of the deal.
Combined with the proposed 50,000 to 60,000 ton a year Eva Copper, an Australian project Harmony hopes to approve this year, the South African gold miner intends to produce up to 100,000 tons of copper concentrate annually within the next five years.
CSA has a current reserve life of 12 years, has maintained a stable resource life for the last decade, and offers extension opportunities in the Merrin mine situated 150 metres underground, in the upper part of the CSA orebody.
