MORE exploration work is needed at Fiji’s oldest operating gold mine as production is now hampered by depleted resources, a lack of exploration work over the last decade and aged machines and infrastructure, making any mining business unsustainable. And the entry of one of China’s top mining companies Shandong Zhaojing Group Company Limited as the controlling shareholders of Vatukoula Gold Mines (VGM) has now made this capital-intensive exercise possible, with work already underway.
“They had committed to invest a minimum of $F200 million to rebuild the mine and upgrade the facilities,” VGM vice chairman Ian He told The Fiji Times.
“As you know, mining at Vatukoula has been going on for 90 years so all these facilities have been run down and have become really old and they urgently need to be replaced and upgraded.
“On the resources side, it’s also quite critical because the easy access resources have been depleted over the 90 years mining period.
“So there is not any easy access high grade deposit available at Vatukoula, which means we are really doing the scavenging, so we call ourselves now as a scavenger because we’re mining the leftovers from the previous owners.
“That is why the mining operation is not sustainable,” Mr He said.
He said mining operation in Vatukoula is currently being done on a ram up basis.
“Because we are still operating the mine, we can’t close the mine for construction as we have to take care of employment.
“That’s why we are in the mining operation and at the same time replace and upgrade the mining facilities.
“So that means we are going to have a ramp up process, which means as we upgrade our facility, the mining work will gradually start to increase. That process will probably take around two to three years.”
The company is also mining its tailings dams and recently acquired full ownership of Pangea Gold Corporation Limited, which it had commissioned in 2017 on a joint-venture basis to reprocess the tailings.
“Our aim is to produce 1500 tonnes of ore per day. Last year at around this time, we only produced 600 tonnes of ore per day,” Mr He said.
“Now we are producing at a consistent, sustainable manner around 1000 tonnes of ore a day, so that’s an increase from 600 tonnes to 1000 tonnes.
“And gradually as we improve our operation through investment, we are going to see our production output to increase to 1500 tonnes a day.”
The total area under VGM’s mining operation in Vatukoula is about 12 square kilometres, according to Mr He.
“For exploration we have around 200 kilometres around the mining lease and on top of that, we have obtained exploration permit for Mt Kasi. That is a little bit less than 600 square kilometres.”
