The completion of the main construction activities and commissioning of the front-end ore crushing, handling and stockpiling system for the Gamsberg zinc mine project, in the Northern Cape, is seen as a significant milestone.

Completed for the Black Mountain Complex – part of the Vedanta Resources group – by ELB Engineering Services and their business partners during July, the milestone supports the phased completion of the construction and commissioning of the four-million-tonne-a-year zinc concentrator in achieving design throughput during initial commissioning.

“Considering that the blasting for the foundation of the crushing station was undertaken on July 20, 2017, this has been a momentous achievement by the project team,” said Dr Stephen Meijers, the CE of ELB, the internationally recognised South African know-how solutions provider to the mining, power, port, construction and industrial sectors.

The success at Vedanta is achieved through ELB-generated innovation, supply of equipment and technology from its world-class partners, in-house-developed expertise and integration of the services and products from the ELB group of companies.

Against the background of a positive zinc price, diversified mining company Vedanta Resources’ subsidiary, Vedanta Zinc International (VZI), has started commissioning activities at the greenfield mining project, where early production has begun.

The India-rooted, London-listed Vedanta group is successfully turning to positive account the zinc assets that Anglo walked away from eight years ago.

Mining Weekly can report that the Vedanta board has approved the go-ahead for a feasibility study into the development of a $700-million, 250 000 t/y, first-phase smelter-refinery complex, with the second and third phases matching the Gamsberg mine’s own phased expansion plans.

The feasibility study’s scope takes in a review of previous work on clustering VZI’s Black Mountain Mine and Skorpion Zinc in neighbouring Namibia. On the cards is the conversion of the 150 000 t/y Scorpion operation to co-treat sulphide and oxide concentrate from Gamsberg.

The company is also looking at downstream industries that may include zinc-related galvanising activity and a sulphuric acid spin-off.

Needed to support all these will be additional power, transport and water infrastructure, with solar power earmarked to play a role in an integrated power solution.