A Nous for Nickel
Owed to extensive feasibility studies and continual investment, Mabiza Resources Ltd is edging ever closer to capitalising on the prize that is the Munali Nickel Mine
Capitalising on Zambia’s mining prize
Zambia for a long time has been talking about diversification away from copper mining. It’s what we should be doing as a mineral rich country; the mines here have been in operation since the early 1900s and are now reaching exhaustion.
“It’s time to take a risk and plunge into something different, something more exciting.”
A career in mining wasn’t the original plan for Matthew Banda, the voice behind the opening statement.
Having been accepted by the University of Zambia to study engineering, chance had it that his roommate had opted for the same path and subject area but was honing his niche specifically for the mining sector. With 24-seven access to his roommate’s books, Banda quickly developed a keen interest in mining engineering, laying the foundations for an illustrious, prolonged career.
“That was 26 years ago now, and I can safely say that I have no regrets in selecting this vocation as my career of choice,” he affirms. “The journey has not been easy, but I have more than enjoyed the vast majority of it.”
The latter half of this quarter century has seen Banda remain stationed 80 kilometres south of the Zambian capital of Lusaka, initially having joined Albidion Zambia Limited (AZL) in 2007 as a senior engineer during the development of Munali Nickel Mine.
“I was part of the initial technical team to commence the green field development of the Munali Nickel Mine,” he reveals, “and I’ve been here ever since.”
The past 13 years have not been plain sailing, however. The site suffered two closures under AZL, the first as a result of the global financial crash in 2009 and the second caused by the then ongoing operational and commercial challenges.
In fact, fortunes only changed in 2014 when Mabiza Resources Limited, a subsidiary of Consolidate Nickel Mines (CNM), commenced operations in Zambia, taking up possession of the mine assets via an agreement with AZL and recruiting its employees, employees that included Banda himself.
“CNM and its partner investors saw an opportunity to turn around the struggling brown field mine,” Banda, now the company’s General Manager of the mine, explains. “Prior to placing significant investment into the project, an extensive feasibility study was commissioned to look at how the operation could be turned around.
“It was imperative to take the necessary precautions, identify what went wrong and reassess what would be done differently going forward regardless of fluctuating and low nickel prices.”
Having unearthed positive results during this undertaking, Mabiza invested significantly and has begun to bring the mine back to life ever since.
The prospects and potential
So, what did this feasibility study uncover?
The simple answer, according to Mabiza, Banda and co, is the commercial potential of the project. The research revealed that the Munali mine is expected to produce around
4,500 tonnes per annum of 10-12 percent in concentrate nickel over a seven to 10-year life of mine, minerals that are ideal for both local Southern African and international smelters.
In addition, the facility had already been fully developed, remained dewatered and houses an operational crush, mill, float plant with a capacity of 900,000 tonnes per annum. The surrounding infrastructure equally followed this trend, with sealed road access, power from the Kafue dam hydroelectric system and a rail siding 20 kilometres from the site with connections to Durban, South Africa and other regions all benefitting the mine.
Looking at the bigger picture, nickel is also being hailed as a mineral of the future. Having long been widely used in batteries, its ability to deliver high energy density and major storage capacities at low costs have seen it being broadly touted as one of the key ingredients in electric vehicles, solar panels and other progressive technologies.
“The operation that has been set up is highly mechanised and is one of a kind in Zambia,” Banda adds. “Further, electric vehicles are here to stay and changes in battery technology makes it even more exciting to venture into nickel production.”
The past four years in particular have been momentous for the mine, Mabiza Resources having placed its own progressive, modernised stamp on the site, making significant changes to the modus operandi such as a shift away from some conventional mining methods and practices.
Banda continues: “This included the introduction of a variation of the avoca mining method, where backfilling the extracted stopes was proposed as opposed to open stopping mining.
This has allowed for better cost control, safety, efficiency of operation,
sustainable mine development and full exploitation and extraction of the resources.
Meanwhile, the government and surrounding community have consistently offered their support and backing to the revitalisation of the project, an element that has encouraged investors to partake and propelled the mine forwards.
Intervention, investment, innovation
The redevelopment of the Munali Nickel Mine has kept pace as a result, and although Banda is quick to admit that the project has suffered some teething problems, overall there has been progress and the future looks bright.
“It’s at different stages from department to department,” he explains. “Some are ramping up production activities while others have stabilised and are now identifying opportunity for optimisation. What I can reveal, however, is that we’re on track to have all operations across all business functions stabilised within a few months.”
Optimisation is not the only area that has captured the Mabiza team at the moment, however. The company has equally invested in new processes including the dense media separation plant at the front end of the concentrator facility and a new PGM stream for the production of a separate PGM concentrate.
“In total we’ve spent in excess of $50 million on new machinery, technology and refurbishments thanks to the investments that we have received,” reveals Banda, further eluding to the implementation of Zambia’s dense media separation (DMS) plant as a flagship facility.
“This introduction of the DMS on the processing side was a game changer. The DMS plant essentially improves feed grade from one percent to two