Mining company Rio-Zim has ordered a gold processing plant and plans to spend up to $3- million on new underground mining equipment in a bid to resuscitate operations at its Cam and Motor gold mine, in the central Zimbabwe district of Kadoma.
Notifying shareholders of the planned resumption of operations at the mine, which ceased operations in 1968, Rio-Zim says it hopes to stabilise its cashflow by funding the Cam and Motor project through a rights offer to one of its subsidiaries, GEM Rio-Zim Investments.
GEM has already paid $700 000 as part of its subscription towards the acquisition of the full shareholding rights on offer.
At the time of its closure in 1968, Cam and Motor had produced 5.3-million ounces of gold.
Trials conducted on the mine’s waste dumps early last year produced impressive results. A deep drilling programme which seeks to quantify
gold reserves located between 100 m and 400 m deep started in 2010 and is still under way.
“The Cam and Motor gold mining project is one of the key projects expected to get the Rio-Zim group turnaround strategy back on
track. Recent geological and metallurgic testwork revealed that, with the current technology and given the current grades of ore, Cam and Motor is capable of producing significant amounts of gold at a competitive cost of production,” the company says.
The new gold processing plant, which was ordered from China, has the capacity to process 1 500 t/m of gold ore.
The group says it will contract mining companies to drill, blast and haul the ore to the plant.
Rio-Zim owns the Empress nickel mine and refinery, the Renco gold mine and the Murowa diamond mine, among other concerns in Zimbabwe.
However, the company has been hard hit by the mutating economic crisis in Zimbabwe.