Skorpion rises again

The Skorpion Zinc mine has been given a new lease on life since Vedanta bought it from Angola American in 2011 and looks set to become an even bigger hive of activity in the months to come. In a recent interview, chief executive officer Deshnee Naidoo said that from the start the need to extend the life of the mine was paramount, given that it, started in the late 1990’s, was originally built to last only 15 years.The new team immediately started spending money on exploration and working on the problem of mining economically, due to the amount of waste which had to be sorted for every ton of metal ore retrieved from the earth. “To find a way to mine economically, we had to get revenue while stripping out the waste,” she said.“These last two years have been tough,” she said, explaining that the plant and infrastructure had also been built with only 15 years in mind and during a two-month shut down for repairs and maintenance the company spent US$15 million, “to get it into shape.” At the same time the global economic slowdown had a tremendous impact on the price of zinc, which fell to below US$1 500 per ton. The mine needs the price above US$2 500 per ton, which was only achieved last year.Over the year and a half leading into 2017 Naidoo worked closely with a new general manager at Skorpion Zinc, Irvinne Simataa, and the two developed a strategy to keep the mine going while opening new possibilities for the future. With only 3,5 years of open pit minable resources, they need to look underground. According to its website, Skorpion’s ore body is open at depth and an extensive drilling programme is under way to deepen the pit to access more mineable ore. In fact, according to Naidoo, this year the company intends to drill 17 000 meters, with another 50 000 meters on the cards for next year. Building on the ongoing expansion of the current pit, the plan stipulates that “if the material is found underground you can use a decline” to reach it, she said.They also work on upgrading the processing capacity at the site. According to mining-technology.com the on-site refinery was the first commercial application of zinc solvent extraction and electro winning for processing primary leach liquor in the country. Crushed ore is homogenised and wet milled. Zinc sulphate is produced through solvent extraction and electrowinning before melting and casting. With a bigger refiner, “we can continue to explore because we know we have the capacity,” she said. Vedanta has plans to increase this capacity and turn the Scorpion plant into Africa’s first full scale zinc refinery where production from its new Gamsberg project in the Northern Cape will also be trucked for processing. But first the mining must continue, and at an economically profitable rate. This job rests on the shoulders of Simataa. As Naidoo put it, “Our future at Skorpion is dependent on how quick Irvinne can mine.” Vedanta’s enigmatic owner chairman Anil Agarwal has lifted the bar demanding production of 200 000 tons a year, up from the current 150 000 tons. Getting to that means moving a lot more earth and doing it a lot quicker. Adding to the problem is the fact that the pit has sunk below the waterline. “I am taking out 800 cubic meters of water a day,” Simataa said. At the beginning of the year he was moving 200 tonnes of earth to recover each ton of ore. “I need a bigger fleet. I need backhoe’s instead of front loaders due to the water. I need to move almost double the tonnage per year,” he said. The SolutionFaced with a mammoth task and failing morale causing high staff turn-over of beyond 25%, something needed to be done. Employees were leaving due to uncertainty whether operations would continue beyond June of this year and at least N$100 million needed to be invested to scale up operations as required. “The dilemma was that we also needed to double the people and double the equipment,” Simataa explained. “The solution was not to outsource labour but to get in a skilled contractor with the people, equipment and ability to deliver the services to the mine in a safe way,” he said. That solution is Basil Read - “a tier one contractor with an asset base almost equal to that of a mining company such as ourselves,” as Naidoo describes the South African multi-sector mega-builder. As a tier one contractor with a track record in Namibia, currently doing similar work at Tschudi, Basil Read has the capacity to mine economically for N$1 per ton, “saving money, saving costs, but also de-risking,” Naidoo explained. “With them we have created life where there shouldn’t have been,” she said.

Skorpion rises again

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Republikein 2025-11-05

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Skorpion rises again

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