JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – A new R100-million tailings retreatment project has been initiated by platinum-mining company Northam at its Booysendal South asset, acquired from Aquarius Platinum.

The project, which involves hydromining and the reprocessing of the of the Booysendal South tailings storage facility (TSF), aims to extract 1.3-million tonnes of chrome product from 8.7-million tonnes of tailings, from which platinum-group metals (PGMs) will also be extracted. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video).

There is R1.3-billion worth of revenue available to Northam from the chrome alone.

“It’s highly cash generative,” Northam Platinum CEO Paul Dunne said in response to Creamer Media’s Mining Weekly Online during a media roundtable.

The low running cost involves the slurring of the tailings into the pumps and the passing of the tailings material through the plant.

Hydromining and TSF reprocessing are scheduled to begin next month and continue through to December 19, after which run-of-mine (RoM) material from the mine will begin to arise in substantial quantity and displace the tailings.

“We’re going to start hosing for chrome next month – September – and then for platinum in March, after the recommissioning of the float section of the platinum plant,” said Dunne, who opted at this stage to withhold the estimate of revenue that will be generated from the retreatment of PGMs.

Apart from the compelling economics of this project, a key objective is to ensure that the concentrator is fully commissioned and optimised ahead of the RoM feed from the Booysendal South mining project, where the central boxcut is nearing completion and development has begun on all seven of the adits that will access both the BS1 and BS2 blocks.

The mine has a relatively new chrome spirals plant and instrumentation in the concentrator plant, which is currently being recommissioned, is being upgraded and standardised with Booysendal North mine.

The Booysendal mining right, which straddles the border of South Africa’s Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces, is located within the southern compartment of the eastern limb of the Bushveld Complex, 35 km from the town of Mashishing, formerly Lydenburg.

A picture was flashed up on to a large screen showing six of the seen adits, the most advanced of which is 35 m into the hillside. These adits will all intersect upper group two reef at 90 m.

From that position, the declines are developed wholly on reef.

“The important point to bear in mind there is that every blast produces a revenue stream,” Dunne said.

All the excavations are expected to be on reef within the next three months.

Some 220 000 m³ of soil have been excavated from the large boxcut, where another 50 000 m³ has still to be removed.

Material from the boxcut excavation was used to construct the base of the 12.6 km access road from the Booysendal north mine to the central complex.

Pictures of the north access road flashed on to the screen showed progress on the blacktop surfacing of the road, which is being built to a provincial standard for durability and safety.

Civil works are under way on the main ore silo, which has a 4 000 t storage capacity. Ore from this silo will be fed on to the aerial rope conveyor to the Booysendal South mills, previously known as Everest South.

A picture of tower 10 of the rope conveyor system was indicative of the considerable magnitude of foundations, which require the pouring of 2 200 m³ of concrete, with 190 t of reinforcing steel used so far.

As at June 30, capital expenditure at the Booysendal South project totalled R733.1-million.