Name of the Project
Elikhulu tailings retreatment plant project

Location
The project is located at Evander mines, in Mpumalanga, South Africa.

Client
Pan African Resources and Evander Gold Mines.

Project Description
The Elikhulu tailings plant project entailed establishing facilities and infrastructure at Evander Gold Mines to retreat gold plant tailings at one-million tonnes a month. This is in addition to the existing production from the Evander tailings retreatment plant (ETRP), which has been incorporated into the Elikhulu plant, and which processed about 200 000 t/m of tailings.

The enlarged plant is forecast to process throughput of 1.2-million tonnes a month and to produce about 70 000 oz/y of gold.

The Elikhulu project uses a conventional carbon-in-leach circuit with an additional pre-oxidation process.

The Elikhulu project has an expected life-of-mine (LoM) of 13 years.

Potential Job Creation
Elikhulu´s construction phase employed more than 1 700 people and will directly employ more than 400 permanent employees and contractors during its LoM.

Value
The initial project capital for Elikhulu is estimated at R1.74-billion.

Duration
The project broke ground in August 2017 and had its first gold pour in August 2018.

Latest Developments
Elikhulu contributed 15 292 oz in its first four months of operation and reached its nameplate capacity of one-million tonnes throughput in October 2018. The ETRP has now successfully been incorporated into Elikhulu. 

Elikhulu operations manager Oriel Shikwambana has pointed out that the retreatment of the three slimes dams, Kinross, Leslie/Bracken and Winkelhaak, will result in reduced environmental liability as the tailings will be deposited on one large tailings storage facility (TSF) site.

“In light of [the tailings dam failure earlier this year] in Brazil, Pan African Resources is commissioning an audit on dormant and active tailings sites. The TSFs are not designed to fail, we have never had a failure and we have stringent monitoring systems in place,” Pan African Resources CEO Cobus Loots has said.  The company has also reviewed hard-rock mining safety.

Key Contracts and Suppliers
DRA Projects (feasibility study, detailed design and construction supervision service) and Fraser Alexander (remining contract).

On Budget and on Time?
The Elikhulu project was completed ahead of schedule and is expected to be within the project budget of R1.74-billion.

Contact Details for Project Information
Pan African Resources project lead Jonathan Irons, tel +27 11 243 2900 or fax +27 11 880 1240.
Aprio Strategic Communications Public and Investor Relations on behalf of Pan African Resources, Julian Gwillim, tel +27 11 880 0037.