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Confidence

growing at

West Wits

by Michael Washbourne

resurgent West Wits Mining Ltd is confident the appeals
A against its recently granted environmental approval for
the company’s Witwatersrand Basin gold project in South
Africa will be dismissed and a long-awaited mining right is just
around the corner.
West Wits was granted environmental authorisation by SA’s
Department of Mineral Resources in June, but three parties
have since appealed that decision. While those appeals were
not unexpected and even foreshadowed by the Johannesburg-
Jac van Heerden
based company, the mining right application has been placed
on hold until the Department of Environmental Affairs makes a
ruling on the matter. and we know that there’s operations in the rest of the world
Nevertheless, West Wits has kicked off a new drilling operating on grades much lower than that.”
campaign as it looks to continue the momentum the company A scoping study which preceded the resource upgrade
has been building at the project through the second half of supports the company’s ambition to produce 50,000-60,000
2020, headlined by the addition of 702,000oz to the total ozpa from Witwatersrand Basin. The West Wits board has
resource base. since pushed the button on a full feasibility study which is on
track for completion in Q2 2021.
Speaking to GMJ last month ahead of an expected busy finish
to the year, Jac van Heerden expressed his confidence in the “We embarked on the scoping study to really give us a bit of a
company’s ability to overcome the legal challenges. road map for the project and we now know what the capability
“Typically, the DMRE don’t normally issue an environmental is of the whole area,” van Heerden said.
approval if they don’t think there’s a high degree of success,” “We’ve always said we’ve got four potential areas to mine and
he said. the scoping study gave us a list of priorities to focus on. We
“As our legal team would state, it’s almost normal practice know that our first focus will be on the Qala shaft and our next
here in South Africa that once an environmental approval gets focus would be what we call the Main Reef and then we’ll move
granted, then someone appeals against it. We’ve responded back into the Bird Reef area.
to the three appeals and we are expecting a positive outcome “We’ve got a nice pipeline of projects coming up and we can now
that will see our environmental approval get reinstated. divide that into future exploration targets and future feasibility
studies.”
“Once that opens, we suspect it’s a couple of weeks for the
department to approve our mining right because we’ve ticked Van Heerden, who was appointed managing director of West
all the boxes to be issued one.” Wits in April after 14 months as chief executive of the company’s
West Wits is currently drilling some key areas of the inferred South African-based subsidiary, welcomed the support shown
resource (14mt @ 3.7 g/t gold for 1.67 moz) which fall within by investors in recent months which culminated in a $3.4 million
the first five years of the mining plan. A key focus for the placement that has boosted the group’s cash balance to the
company is intersecting the K9A and K9B horizons that form healthiest position it has been in several years.
part of the Qala Shallows area which will underpin the early “We’ve had good support from a big investor base, especially
stages of production. loyal investors that have supported us through the years and
Total resources at Witwatersrand Basin now stand at 35.1mt hopefully now we’re in a position where their loyal support is
@ 3.88 g/t gold for 4.7 moz, with the 0.48 g/t uptick in grade paying off,” he said.
proving to be a nice surprise for van Heerden and his team. “I think our investors understand the hurdles that we’ve got
“We didn’t expect that, we thought the grade would remain the to jump over, but this is a journey for West Wits and we look
forward to having those investors join us for the journey ahead.”
same, so it was a nice little windfall for us,” he said. “It’s always
nice to move into a feasibility study with a positive resource

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