Gold Fields of Mazowe Limited is the parent company of Mazowe Mine - a high-grade, underground gold mining operation.
Mazowe Mine is situated in the west-central part of the Harare greenstone belt. Orebodies here generally comprise shear zones which are in-filled with gold-bearing sulphides and quartz. The mineralised zones are up to 1.0 metre in width, have average grades of 4 to 5g/t, and mostly dip between 10° and 60° to the north.
Pay shoots range from 25 to 200 metres on strike. Gold mineralisation is associated with the sulphide species pyrite, pyrrhotite and arsenopyrite. In most cases the gold is intimately associated with this sulphide mineralisation and only to a limited degree with vein quartz. Approximately 70% of the gold is ‘free gold’ recovered by gravity concentration and over 15 mineralised structures have been exploited to date.
Mazowe Mine is one of the oldest mines in Zimbabwe, and exploration and development in this region dates back to 1890, with over 1.4 million ounces of gold produced to date. Mazowe Mine comprises two underground operations, Mazowe and the BSV sections. The mine has a total of 247 claims over 2,939 hectares of land holding. Ore is processed in a single plant which consists of conventional crushing and milling and a carbon-in-leach facility.
The current hoisting capacity is 22ktpm and current milling capacity is 10.5ktpm. The average mined grade is 4-5g/t.
Production for 2015 was 10,695oz ounces, with C1 cost of $1,225 per ounce. Forecast production in 2016 is 14,000 ounces, with a C1 cost of $978 per ounce.
A new Processing plant, whose construction began in 2016, will ramp up production at Mazowe. The plant has capacity to process at least 65,000tpm of ore..
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Exploration prospects
There is vast exploration potential and the Conceptual Target size of Mazowe and the nearby BSV mine is of the order of 2.5 to 3 million ounces of gold to a depth of 1000m. The Mazowe gold deposit, mainly comprising several sub-parallel east- striking, shear hosted narrow reefs has a defined strike length of nearly 3km. It is open ended on strike and down-dip.
An underground exploration diamond drilling program with the objective of delineating 400,000t at 6.0 g/t is in progress. The drilling program aims to generate resources to support the expansion program.
An RC drilling program with a total of 5000m at an estimated cost of $420,000 to explore for near surface resources amenable to low cost open pit mining is in progress at Amatola. The objective of the program is to generate resources that can be exploited through open pit mining to contribute feed for the new Processing Plant.
Expansion plans
The new Processing Plant and Tailing Storage Facility will be commissioned in Q1 2017 and will increase capacity substantially at Mazowe Mine to 70,000 tonnes per month.
Mazowe Mine is expected to become a major gold producer in Zimbabwe.
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