Preparatory work for manganese mine to start next month
The Chinese company, Guyana Manganese Inc., is gearing up to start preparatory work at its mining site at Matthews Ridge, North West District, before the ending of next month and is seeking operators for heavy-duty equipment.
According to an advertisement in Wednesday’s edition of Stabroek News, the company has vacancies for operators for a front-end loader, excavator, bulldozer and a grader. According to an official from the company, even though they have several pieces of heavy-duty equipment still to deliver to the North West District, they are expecting to finish the hiring for the four vacant positions by July 15 and hope to get their operations going by July 25.
“We’ve had a lot of applications from all over the country so far and we’ve already identified two prime candidates for two of the positions but we still need more,” the official said.
On January 25, 2017 Minister of Natural Resources, Raphael Trotman gave his consent to an agreement reached between Bosai Minerals Group and Reunion Gold Corporation which paves the way for manganese mining to resume in Matthews Ridge, Region One after several decades.
According to a release from his ministry on January 27, Trotman signed documents approving the acquisition agreement between the two entities at the Ministry’s Secretariat, Guyana Geology and Mines Commission’s Compound, Brickdam. This approval comes two months after Bosai Minerals Group the company mining bauxite at Linden – initialled an agreement with Reunion Gold Corporation to acquire the latter’s rights in the Manganese Project.
On November 4, 2016, Reunion Gold Corporation had announced that it had entered a Definitive Agreement to sell its Matthews Ridge Manganese Project to Bosai Minerals Group.
The release had said that Reunion’s exploration programme on acquiring its licences in 2010 was designed to identify and measure manganese resources in the four Prospecting Licences. The exploration programme confirmed the occurrence of manganese mineralisation.
Since then, Reunion Manganese Inc, has spent over US$50 million to define what it described as a worldclass manganese deposit in Matthews Ridge. The release said that there is an initial 10 million tonnes of concentrate with the potential to double with the addition of the satellite site of Pipiani.
Bosai will mine using conventional open pit methods with minimum blasting and the mine will have a life of 15 to 35 years.
The release said that a construction period of approximately two years is envisaged, with work encompassing:
Construction of a Wharf facility at Port Kaituma to receive supplies for the mine and mill
Construction and the upgrading of roads from Port Kaituma wharf to Matthews Ridge and Pipiani
Mine development work including stripping and pit work for ore extraction
Construction of tailings management and water supply facilities and milling plant for treatment of manganese ores to concentrate
Building of additional infrastructure at the mine to support the operation
Bosai expects that employment numbers can reach as high as 1,200 during peak construction and then stabilise at 300 to 400 during operations. Once in production, the company intends to ship 350,000 tonnes of manganese per year, the release said.