Navachab: Deeper, bigger, better

QKR Namibia’s Navachab gold mine has produced more than two million carats of gold since its first gold bar was poured in 1989. This came after the deposit was discovered on Farm Navachab in 1984 and the mine was developed in 1988.

Managing director George Botshiwe, who is also president of the Chamber of Mines of Namibia, said the company was continuing to invest in expanding and improving the mine’s operations.

Navachab, Namibia’s oldest gold mine, is pursuing a strategy focused on extending the life of the operation, improving recovery rates and extracting gold more efficiently from relatively low-grade ore. The mine continues to operate its large open pit, which extends more than 250 metres below the surface, is over one kilometre long and about half a kilometre wide.

And since November 2025, underground exploration has also accelerated.

Botshiwe said the southern underground decline, already approaching one kilometre in depth, would eventually connect with a northern decline being developed simultaneously. The aim is to follow the ore body below the bottom of the existing pit.

“The pit still contains about 2.5 million ounces of gold, while Navachab’s total resource is about five million ounces. So the rest is underground,” Botshiwe said.

The underground tunnels begin from within the pit, about 120 metres below the surface. Botshiwe said ongoing trials were assessing rock formations, geotechnical conditions and water ingress, while exploration drilling continued to determine the quantity and grade of ore at depth.

“It is much cheaper to tunnel underground with the drill rigs at the bottom,” he said. “We are already developing ore access.”

Although the viability of underground mining depends on ore grade, depth and economics, Botshiwe said the company remained “super positive” about the results so far.

Ownership

Navachab was owned by AngloGold Ashanti until 2014, when it was sold to Qatar Holdings, Kulczyk Investments (KI) and Namibia’s state-owned mining company Epangelo Mining, which acquired a 7.5% stake. KI, led by Polish businessman Sebastian Kulczyk, later bought out Qatar Wealth Sovereign Fund and now holds 93.77% of the mine, while Epangelo retains 6,23% shareholding.

Botshiwe confirmed that Epangelo repaid its purchase obligation from its share of mine earnings and now receives the full benefit of any dividends declared. The most recent dividend was paid between February and March this year.

By the end of May, Navachab employed 846 permanent staff, with a further 416 people employed by contractors, including Australian underground mining specialist Byrnecut.

Botshiwe said the mine had deliberately engaged Namibian contractors, awarding significant work to companies such as Kodo Drilling, Eitavelo and Mintaka. Mintaka, a Namibian blasting engineering services company, has secured a contract to blast about 30 million tonnes per year.

“Most of our contractors here at Navachab are local companies,” Botshiwe said, adding that the mine aimed to support entrepreneurship in surrounding communities. “We need to be entrepreneurs, and we need to be innovative. We do a lot of optimisation studies to go deeper and to maintain and grow the mine. Over the last five to six years, we have been able to double the gold output of the mine.”

Further expansion

Botshiwe said reducing unit operating costs to about US$1 300 per ounce had supported further expansion, including a surface exploration programme costing about N$200 million over 18 months.

Navachab produced about 131 000 ounces of gold in 2025. The mine is also expanding and refining its processing plant, including the installation of a gravity concentrator aimed at improving gold recovery.

“Water is a big issue. We must be creative. We have access to a pipeline from the Swakoppoort Dam, but we must make use of each and every drop,” Botshiwe said.

He said Navachab’s ore grade averaged about 0.7 grams of gold per tonne, below one gram per tonne, which meant the mine had to focus on technological improvements rather than simply expanding processing capacity. In light of this, in 2010, Navachab adopted Dense Media Separation (DMS) technology, adapted from the diamond mining industry, to separate gold-bearing rock from waste more effectively.

More recently, the mine introduced X-ray sorting technology, using air jets to separate crushed gold-bearing material from waste rock. “The combined technologies allow us to double the grade for throughput to 1.4 grams per tonne,” Botshiwe said.

The mine has also invested in High Pressure Grinding Rolls (HPGR) technology and Swiss Tower Mills, commissioned about two years ago, which can grind ore down to 75 microns. Botshiwe said the mills added about 115 tonnes per hour, or roughly 3 000 tonnes per day, to processing capacity. The installation cost about N$1 billion.

Processes

After grinding, the ore is thickened, leached with oxygen and cyanide, and processed through absorption tanks where activated carbon captures the gold. The final doré bars produced at the smelter house contain between 84% and 88% gold, Botshiwe said.

Botshiwe described the underground development as a major opportunity for skills transfer. He praised Byrnecut for training Namibian engineers, technicians, graduates, interns and artisans from the Namibian Institute of Mining Technology (NIMT). “We have employed many young engineers and technicians to learn from them. We also have many graduates and interns recruited from our universities and artisans from NIMT, about 100 per year,” he said.

“We are proud that when they leave here, they have gone through one of the best mining schools in the country.”