Navachab

Overview

Navachab is located 10 km southwest of Karibib and 170 km west-northwest of Windhoek, the capital of Namibia.

Navachab is mined as an open-pit mine with a CIP plant that has a production capacity of 120,000tpm. The plant includes mills, CIP and electro-winning facilities. A dense media separation (DMS) plant with a 200 tonnes per hour (tph) capacity was commissioned during 2010 and a portion of the CIP feed comes from this pre-concentration plant.

 In 2011, the mine produced 66,000 ounces of gold.

Location

Navachab is located 10 km southwest of Karibib and 170 km west-northwest of Windhoek, the capital of Namibia.

Namibia, ‘land of the brave’, is located in southwestern Africa on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. The country has a population of 2.1 million people and a stable multi-party parliamentary democracy. Half of its population live below poverty line. Agriculture, herding, tourism and the mining industry – including mining for gem diamonds, uranium, gold, silver, and base metals – form the backbone of Namibia's economy.

Geology & Mineralization

The Navachab gold deposit is located in the Pan-African Damara Orogen and is hosted by greenschist-amphibolite facies calc-silicates, marbles and volcanoclastic rocks. The rocks have been intruded by granite, pegmatite and aplitic dykes and have also been deformed into a series of alternating dome and basin-like structures. 

The mineralization at Navachab forms a sheet-like body which plunges at an angle of approximately 20° to the northwest. The mineralization is predominantly hosted in a sheeted quartz vein set and a replacement skarn. The mineralization in the Main pit is hosted by a northeast to southwest striking metamorphosed sequence of calc-silicates, marbles and volcanoclastic rocks that dip at 70° to the west. The gold is very fine-grained and associated with pyrrhotite and minor amounts of pyrite, chalcopyrite, arsenopyrite, sphalerite, maldonite and bismuthinite. An estimated 90% of the gold occurs as free gold and the remainder is present in minerals such as maldonite (Au2Bi). Silver is also present with a gold to silver ratio of approximately 15 to 1. 

As of December 31, 2011 Navachab reserves were estimated at 50.49 Mt at 1.26 g/t for 2.05 Moz gold; while resources were calculated at 134.54 Mt at 1.14 g/t gold for 4.95 Moz gold.

Mining & Operation

Navachab is a conventional truck and shovel open pit mining operation.

Processing

The Navachab process facilities include a carbon-in-pulp (CIP) plant that has a production capacity of 120,000 tpm.

The plant includes mills, CIP and electro-winning facilities.

A dense media separation (DMS) plant with a 200 tonnes per hour (tph) capacity was commissioned during 2010 and a portion of the CIP feed comes from this pre-concentration plant.

Environment & Community

Navachab made contributions to educational projects, including the ‘Spell it Right’ competition, spring school for grade 12 learners and prize giving ceremonies at local and regional schools. Navachab also sponsored the building of a house for volunteer teachers at the local government school, contributed to the young scientist exhibition and made its annual donation to the private school in the town of Karibib.

The construction of the water filtration plant commenced in 2010 with commissioning planned to be complete by the third quarter of 2011. This facility will ensure additional recovery of water from the plant to eliminate the need for a third TSF and also negate the inherent safety, health and environment risk associated with a TSF.

ISO 14001 environment certification was maintained during the year. Navachab further received a formal notification of compliance with the Cyanide Code from the Code Secretariat