Mining & Trade News

Mchenga Coal Mines Limited (MCM), which is one of the oldest mines in the country, has unveiled plans to extend and open new mining sites in its license area to increase its annual coal production from the current 12000 tonnes to 48000 by 2021.

MCM Mining Manager Munashe Dicha disclosed the plans in an interview with Mining & Trade Review during a media tour of the mine organised by the Ministry of Natural Resources, Energy and Mining.

Dicha said the planned increase in production is aimed at meeting the demand of coal from its local customers.

He said: “It has been a long time since our customers started complaining that we, the local coal producers, are failing to meet their demands. We have located new sites that we plan to open as soon as possible to up production,”

“The sites include Phoka Mine, office block thus near our offices, and we also we want to extend the existing Mwandira mine.”

Dicha said the office block prospect has a huge reserve to support development of three mines.

He said the planned production increase will reduce the importation of coal from neighboring countries including Zimbabwe and Mozambique.

Mchenga customers are spread across Malawi and include Limbe Leaf Tobacco Company, Cement Products, Kanengo Tobacco Processors, Central Poultry Feeds Group, East Metals, and Malawi Iron and Steel Corporation (Miscor).

Regional Mining Engineer for the Northern Region George Maneya commended Mchenga for its plans to increase production.

Maneya said: “Mchenga lies within the Livingstonia Coalfield where coal is of highest quality compared to the Sub Sahara coal.”

“So the idea for the company to increase production implies Malawi will produce more quality coal to meet the demands of the local market.”

He said if local companies increase their production to meet the domestic demand, the government will map out ways to reduce importation of coal from other countries, which is creating unfair competition with the local industry hence threatening the survival of local investments.

Mchenga also updated the journalists on its plans to kick-start construction works for the 100 MW Rukuru Power Plant by 2021.

“We already conducted a feasibility study which proved the viability of the project. We are currently working out agreements with other stakeholders to solicit funds for the project,” Dicha said.

Dicha said the plant will be connected to the national grid and the company will only tap 5MW for its operations.

Meanwhile, Mchenga is executing a corporate social responsibility programme in the area which   includes provision of free health facilities and drugs to surrounding communities; provision of free portable water and; construction of school blocks and teachers’ houses; chief’s houses; playing fields; and renovation of roads.

MCM has also employed a bulk of its 236 employees from the surrounding community and has provided the employees and their families social amenities including a clinic, a primary school, kindergarten, a subsidized shop, sporting facilities, electricity, a club with pay television (DSTV), a maize mill and portable water.

Dicha said the company is also providing internship opportunities to students from Polytechnic University and technical colleges, and in-house training in Mining Engineering.

Mchenga has also embarked on an environmental rehabilitation exercise where by it is planting trees in worked out areas.

The company approximately planted 12000 tree seedlings in eroded areas and estimates that within 2-years, it will be able to start harvesting mine support timbers from its own rehabilitation plantations.

Coal at Mchenga Mine is extracted using Room and Pillar method, which involves the application of underground working variation of Board and Pillar configurations, a competitive method in ground control measures for stability and safety.

Coal Mining at Mchenga started in 1987 and a state owned mining company, the defunct Mining Investment and Development Corporation (MIDCOR), operated the Mine to May 1995 when it was privatised.

The Natural Resources Justice Network (NRJN) says the new Mines and Minerals Act, which has a provision for the Malawi government to decide to have at least 10% shareholding in large scale mining ventures, is far from meeting the expectations of Malawians as the rightful beneficiaries of mining projects.

Chairperson of NRJN KossamMunthali told Mining & Trade Review in an interview that it is unfortunate that parliament passed the Mines and Minerals Bill with such a provision for free government equity when the civil society made it clear that this is on the lower side.

Munthali said: “We already made it clear to government that this is a non-starter and have been wondering what are the basis like and from which model are we trying to borrow.”

“We feel the government is failing to be sincere to Malawians by dangling almost all the proceeds of mining projects to companies at the expense of the nation including impoverished communities in mining areas. In crafting this law, we would have used models of countries in the region which are reaping substantial benefits from the mining sector such as Botswana.”

In Botswana, the Mines and Minerals Act gives government an option to own 15% shares in new mines but the Act calls for negotiations with regard to shares in diamond mining companies.

Consequently, the government has a 50% stake in Debswana with a private company, De Beers, holding the rest, and the Botswana government fully owns other diamond investments including the Okavango Diamond Company and Morupule Colliery.

Munthali explains that though Community Development Agreements (CDA) have been included in the law as advocated by the civil society groups, the law is far from maximizing community benefits from mining projects citing that despite civil society groups advocating for 3 to 4% of mine revenue to be channeled to community projects, the law is only talking of about 0.45% of the annual growth sales revenue.

“Government should not forget that mining is not agriculture because you do not grow uranium like trees. You mine for now or you extract for now, and then it is gone for good.”

He also urges the government to amend the law on community development agreements to take on board medium scale mines which are many in the country as compared to large scale mines.

Munthali also laments the omission of the issue of “free, prior and informed consent” in the Act saying the absence of such a provision is denying the community the right to access information about mining projects taking place in their areas.

“Government enacted the Access to Information law and joined the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) to ensure that information on   mining issues is available to the country’s citizens including communities affected by mining activities. It would have, therefore, been another progressive step on the issue of transparency and accountability on mining activities to include the issue of ‘free, prior and informed consent’ in the new law,” he says.

He explains that in absence of such a provision, mining companies will not be obliged to sensitise communities on the projects taking place in their respective areas.

Malawi government holds 15% shareholding in Kayelekera Mine in Karonga, the country’s largest mining investment, with the rest of the shares owned by Australia’s Paladin Africa.

Despite collecting royalties and taxes from the mine, the Malawi government has not been successful in earning dividends from its shares as Kayelekera, now on care and maintenance, has remained a loss making entity due to low uranium prices on the world market.

An Exploration Drilling is a process of mineral exploration in the mining industry through extraction of rock quantity to probe the contents of known ore deposits and potential sites by withdrawing a small diameter core or chip of rock from the orebody so that geologists can analyse the core/chip by chemical assaying and conduct petrologic, structural and mineralogical studies of the rock. Mineral exploration companies are often broken down into two categories namely; greenfield and brownfield.

Greenfield Exploration refers to unexplored areas, where mineral deposits are not already known to exist which can also be subdivided into grassroot and advanced projects while Brownfield Exploration, also known as near-mine exploration, refers to areas where mineral deposits were previously discovered. Exploration companies search globally for mineral deposits that can be economically mined and processed and mineral exploration is made up of a variety of different activities and techniques of which drilling is one of them, that are used to find a potential discovery which eventually may one day become an operating mine.

The goal of Mineral Exploration Techniques

Many different types of exploration techniques are used in conjunction in order to get enough information to accurately define a mineral deposit. Once enough high-quality geological data has been gathered from exploration activities, a project can be analyzed for economic feasibility.

Management will use this data to make a decision on whether to continue exploration, establish or update a mineral resource estimate, proceed with mine feasibility studies in order to reach production, or pursue other strategic initiatives with the property. The data obtained and used must pass through QAQC (Quality Assurance Quality Control) and thereafter highly validated to give well reliable and informed output for successful mining. Going from a previously unexplored piece of land (“greenfield exploration”) to a well-defined mineral deposit can take years and years of work and huge sums of money can be pumped in though in the first instance the chances of success are very slim such that an exploration company can attempt to withdraw. An example of our own KanyikaNiobium Project and Mkango Resources Songwe Hill Rare Earth Project are living testimonies of how long they carried out their exploration activities. However, the Kayelekera Uranium Project did not take that much years to commence mining since there was already exploration data that existed from the 1980s and was done previously by CEGB (Central Electricity Generating Board) of UK before Balmain Resources took over and was granted an EPL in 1997/98 and later entered into agreement with Paladin Resources to have 90% interest and the remaining 10% equity stake in the project was granted in 2005.

There are many techniques that may be utilized during mineral exploration programs, depending on the mineral deposit type and stage of exploration that is being pursued – as well as the location and budget of the program of which among them is Drilling.

Drilling Techniques

Drilling is the most expensive method of exploration and typically occurs in the later stages of exploration after other methods have already identified a potential deposit     (anomaly). As drilling is an expensive undertaking, detailed study of the area must be made before starting the project. Core logging forms an important aspect of an exploration geologist job and an important stage in the follow up work to an exploration target. There are many different types of drilling methods and all have their place in the universe. Drilling programs are used to collect rock samples at greater depths than surface methods allow. Among others, this page will highlight some of the drilling methods used.

(a) Diamond Drilling (DD)

This method produces a continuous core of rock (in theory) and allows a solid piece of rock core to be collected in such a way that an interval of core allows for much more data to be accurately interpreted.  It consists basically of a hammer unit which is driven by compressed air. This hammer unit imparts a series of short, rapid, blows to the drill steel or rods and at the same time slowly rotates them and sometimes known as down-the-hole hammer and as the name implies, the hammer unit is lowered down the hole at the end of the rods and the diamond drill bit on the end of the hammer unit consists of a large number of chisel ends. Drilled samples are then assayed, and the results will help build a model of the entire deposit. This type of drilling can eventually lead to the entire resource being defined within the boundaries of a chosen cut-off grade but based on the recovery percentage of the core.

(b) Reverse Circulation (RC)

 Reverse circulation drilling produces rock chips which can be sampled under the assumption that they come to the surface in the order in which they were produced and this method returns rock samples in the form of chips that allows sampling but at greater depths. Air is blown down the outside of the drill steel (between it and the wall of rock) and the air and rock chips are carried to the surface on the inside of the drill steel. As the air exits the drill with great blows of dust the rock chips are captured and put in bags for subsequent assaying. In this instance a very large truck is loaded with a tower, drill head, compressor and motor is used. The drill bit is usually of a tri-cone construction (3 cone shaped bits) and a bunch of air blown into the hole to capture the rock chips. This type of drilling is usually a fraction of the cost of diamond drilling but there is controversy surrounding the validity of the samples that are obtained and the method limits the amount of information that can be derived from the sample. Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing what the recovery of chips is and usually it is must be over 100% because the wall of the drill hole caves back a bit and extra rock chips are created and prone to contamination.

(c) Auger Drilling

This method uses an auger as a drilling device. It usually includes a rotating screw   helical blade called a “flighting” to act as a conveyor so as to remove the drilled-out material. The rotation of the blade causes the material to move out of the hole being drilled. Auger drills are used for semi-consolidated soils and produce a core (hollow core) or loose samples (solid core)

(d) Churn drilling

A drill whose cutting action is achieved by raising and dropping a chisel bit. Under this operation, drilling is performed by a heavy string of tools tipped with a blunt-edge chisel bit suspended from a flexible cable, to which a reciprocating motion is imparted by its suspension from an oscillating beam thereby causing the bit to be raised and dropped. It is used to sample gravels by pounding a steel pipe into the ground and then pulling out the material trapped inside the pipe. In churn (cable tool drilling)- heavy chisel like steel is repeatedly jerked up and down by a cable wire.

(e) Sonic Drilling

Cutting or shaping materials with an abrasive slurry driven by a reciprocating tool attached to an audio-frequency electromechanical transducer and vibrating at sonic frequency. This method uses sound waves to consolidate wet deposits like tailings ponds and capture the soils in a tube.

So far, the most common methods which are used in modern day exploration drilling are diamond and reverse circulation drilling methods. The other types of drilling are for fairly specialized cases and because a solid sample is obtained directly can be quite accurate. Of course, it often happens that the sample won’t come out of the pipe sometimes wholly as anticipated by the geologist. The mining industry lives and dies on the accuracy of the samples taken. And the most important samples are taken by drilling so it is important to understand the drilling process ensuring that good questions can be asked. As with anything in life, it is best to find out a bit about the company doing the drilling to       decide as to the validity of the sampling results.  Now that there is a lot of data collected and some interesting mineralization has been discovered, it is time to try and represent the data accurately in space. So the concept of a geological model is produced.

As reported in our article on Page 12, the Malawi Government says it is working on establishing a loan fund to finance operations of artisanal and small-scale miners (ASMs).

Director of Mines in the Ministry of Mining Samuel Sakhuta is quoted in the article as saying that his Ministry is working with the Ministry of Finance to come up with a revolving fund for procuring equipment for ASMs.

We strongly support this initiative by the Malawi Government and would like to urge the authorities to expediate its implementation.

As MD for Maleta Gems and Jewels which is a key player in the ASM subsector Percy Maleta is quoted in the article, the revolving fund is the major way to alleviate the financial challenges faced by small scale miners in Malawi. 

We have reported in plenty of articles in previous editions of some ASMs involved in mining of industrial minerals such as limestone, quarry and gypsum who have potential to develop their businesses but they are failing to do so because they are forced to use primitive equipment due to lack of funding to buy mechanized equipment.

We have reported previously about ASMs including women in mining who are being forced to sell rough gemstones because they are failing to process the stones into finished products hence are being robbed by the buyers including foreigners who buy the stones for a song.

We have reported about small-scale gold miners causing serious environmental damage in their hotspots across the country because they mine on trial and error basis due to lack of gold detectors.

We feel the solution to all these problems is the loan fund for ASMs, whose trade is attracting multitudes across Malawi including members of the rural population.

As Maleta is quoted in the article, the mining sector is one of the key enablers in Malawi 2063 just like agriculture and tourism.

Therefore, government needs to invest in mining just like it is doing in these other sectors to propel economic growth.

Malawi’s mining sector cannot grow through facilitating foreign direct investment in large scale mining only, small scale miners also needs to be supported so that they are able to graduate into medium scale mechanized miners.