With LSE-listed diversified miner Vedanta Resources’ Lisheen zinc/lead mine, in Ireland, reaching the end of its life next month, the company has started construction of the Gamsberg zinc mine.

On July 27, the company broke ground at the project, in the Northern Cape, 20 km east of its existing Black Mountain mine, near the town of Aggeneys. The construction of the mine is scheduled to be completed by early 2018.

Vedanta Zinc International projects VP Satish Kumar tells Mining Weekly that the $630-million project will be a four-million-ton-a-year, run-of-mine openpit operation. A processing plant with the same capacity will process the ore into concentrate.

“During the first phase of the project, we have targeted the exploitation of about one-quarter, or about 50-million tons, of the resources defined in the deposit,” he says.

The initial life-of-mine is expected to be 13 years; however, the Gamsberg deposit contains about 200- million tons of zinc resource, which will provide it future life extention options, depending on market conditions at the time.

The company will not only mine and process the ore but also market the concentrate.

Kumar says the mine will use mechanised truck and shovel mining methods and Gamsberg will have a workforce of about 500 people once the mine becomes operational, adding that the peak labour requirement for the mine during the construction phase will be about 1 000 to 1 500 workers.

The majority of the mine’s workforce will be sourced from the Namaqualand region.

Meanwhile, Vedanta’s Black Mountain mine is about 150 km from the Sishen–Saldanha railway line’s Loop 10 loading facility. The company trucks concentrate to Loop 10, where it has a storage facility that it uses to load product onto freight logistics group Transnet’s trains, which transport the material to Saldanha Bay, in the Western Cape, for export.

Black Mountain has capacity to produce 30 000 t/y of zinc in concentrate, 40 000 t/y of lead, 7 000 t/y of copper and 50 t/y of silver. In total, Vedanta exports about 90 000 t/y of concentrate.

Once the Gamsberg mine is operational, additional tonnage can be transported by road directly to Saldanha or it can be railed through the Loop 10 facility along the Sishen–Saldanha line.

Vedanta will also truck about 150 000 t/y of zinc metal in concentrate to its Skorpion Zinc refinery, in Namibia, to process into metal.

Kumar points out that Black Mountain’s minable underground Deeps reserve will be depleted by 2021, further underlining the importance of the Gamsberg project. However, the company is exploring the surrpounding area to increase the resource base and secure additional feed for the Black Mountain operation.

Socioeconomic Benefits

Kumar highlights that the Gamsberg project will have “far-reaching” socioeconomic benefits for Namaqualand, where unemployment is high, with an investment of about R7-billion during the first phase of execution, which includes the development of the mine and concentrator.

“It will create indirect jobs in supply and support services for the mine. The project will result in significant scaling up of outlay on community development initiatives under the aegis of our community social responsibility initiatives,” he concludes.