Pan African bets on Elikhulu plan

The fully commissioned Elikhulu tailings retreatment plant at Evander in Mpumalanga underpins the confidence Pan African Resources has that it will hit its full-year production target of 170,000oz for its 2019 financial year.

The fully commissioned Elikhulu tailings retreatment plant at Evander in Mpumalanga underpins the confidence Pan African Resources has that it will hit its full-year production target of 170,000 ounces for its 2019 financial year, says the miner’s CEO, Cobus Loots.

Pan African, which operates a gold mine and tailings project in Barberton in Mpumalanga as well as the recently built R1.7bn Elikhulu project, has had to shut its unprofitable underground mine at Evander.

Pan African’s gold output for the September quarter, the first in its 2019 financial year, was 37,729 ounces. The Barberton underground mines generated 27,201 ounces and the tailings project nearby 5,900 ounces.

The Elikhulu project, commissioned in September and which processes 1-million tons of tailings a month, will be expanded with the addition of the existing Evander tailings retreatment plant, lifting total throughput to 1.2-million tons a month. The combination will be completed in January 2019.

Feeding into the plants is material scavenged from the high-grade underground mining areas as Pan African gradually closes the mine.

The underground mining generated 3,815 ounces.

Evander’s underground assets will not be completely lost because Pan African plans to mine pillars at its 8 Shaft and pick out the high-grade areas nearby. The work to prepare these areas will be completed by March 2019.

The flagship Barberton mines were forecast to reach 100,000 ounces of gold in 2019. Pan African, which is listed in London and Johannesburg, shut its Evander underground mine in May 2018, shedding 1,700 jobs, after monthly losses of R30m.

Delivering the Elikhulu project to steady-state production during September after it poured its first gold in August was a pressing task, but exploration results from the Royal Sheba deposit at Barberton had pushed the development of an open-cast mine there to the top of the Pan African management team’s agenda, Loots said.

It is unlikely the mine will cost more than Elikhulu, which entailed building a plant with an annual capacity of 12-million.

EVANDER’S ASSETS WILL NOT BE COMPLETELY LOST BECAUSE PAN AFRICAN PLANS TO MINE PILLARS AT ITS 8 SHAFT