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AFRIcA DoWn UnDeR PReVIeW

pected to reinforce the potential for the
deposit to take Motheo well beyond the
current 30,000 tpa copper target.
“It is really exciting because if you look at
“ The opportunity still exists to we run at 5.2 mtpa at well above 1% cop-
A4, it’s 20-25% higher grade than T3 so, if

per, all of a sudden you are looking at plus-
50,000 tpa for 10 years with expansion ca-
explore the belt and we have
pable from A4 and T3 underground.”
Adding to A4’s potency is the lack of ad-
just completed the largest AEM
ditional capital required to include it in the
survey ever undertaken in Botswana.
overall Motheo plan.
“There is a disproportionate economic
improvement to the introduction of A4 be-
cause of the volumes and margins,” Simich
said.
The DFS work assumed A4 would come
onstream once T3 was at steady state but
Simich said the company was considering
an earlier start-up for the second deposit.
“We don’t know yet, but the feeling is it
will likely come onstream reasonably early
to give a more balanced mining profile,” he
said. “There is a big stripping exercise to do
for T3 so maybe A4 development will coin-
cide with T3, enabling us to get the scale
right. It may mean possibly rolling into an
expansion to 5.2 mtpa from the beginning.
“If the blended head grade is better than
the original schedule, the economic pay-
back will improve.”
With the processing plant already sized
for expansion, Sandfire will concentrate on
getting the economics and permitting at A4
in line for the end of the year.
“There is a lot of work happening internal-
ly on that to have a view on the expansion
by the end of 2021,” Simich said.
The introduction of A4 into the mining
plan will be the biggest deviation yet from
the original T3 conception developed by
Mod Resources. Sandfire acquired Mod in
June 2019 after the junior had produced a
robust PFS based on T3. Simich believes
the greater firepower of Sandfire has al-
lowed it to unlock A4 earlier than Mod could
ever have hoped to.
“Having good, deep planning, having the
capacity to finance exploration as well as
development and the time to consider op-
tionality, that’s the beauty of a larger com-
pany having taken over Mod,” he said. “We
can ask ourselves if there is a better way to
do it, while also maintaining the momentum
on the exploration front. For the effort put
in and the money invested, we are going to
get a better resource much sooner and that
will benefit all stakeholders.”
On announcing the licence approval,
Simich said Motheo would create 1,000
jobs during construction and 600 full-time
The A4 deposit has given Motheo jobs during operations. If the company ful-
a high-grade boost, opening up fils its longer-term ambitions, there could be
the project to expansion
many more jobs over the next two decades.
If Simich’s predictions are correct, A4
may be the first of several new discoveries

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