Mabiza Resources and its major investor, London-based Consolidated Nickel Mines (CNM) announced that operations have been resumed at the Munali nickel mine in southern Zambia.
The restart is taking place following a $50-million refurbishment that included the re-engineering of all key technical aspects of the project, from reinterpreting the orebody and changing the mining method, to revising the metallurgical process with the introduction of Dense Media Separation technology and differential flotation.
This process began in 2014, three years after the mine was placed on care and maintenance due to low nickel prices and poor operational performance.
Munali's total reserves are estimated at 6.01Mt @ 1.00% NiMunali is located 70 kilometres south of Lusaka and comprises an underground mining operation extracting nickel sulphide ore. There is also an operational crush, mill, and float plant with capacity of 80,000tpm.
In a media statement, Mabiza and CNM said that following the restructuring of the mine, they expect to drive production to steady-state levels of 60,000tpa by Q4 2019.
"Today is the culmination of nearly four years of hard work by the team and has involved a full reassessment of the project to de-risk it both technically and economically," Simon Purkiss, CEO of CNM, said. "We are committed to being a responsible miner and ensuring the socio-economic benefits created by the mine are lasting and shared with our local communities and host government."