Media Release: Navachab Gold Mine Goes Underground

Karibib – QKR Namibia Navachab Gold Mine this week reached a significant milestone in its mine expansion strategy, when it executed a historic blast resulting in a 5.5m x 5.5m portal drive. This is the first step towards the mine’s plans to undertake underground mining in addition to the open pit mining it has been operating since its establishment in 1989.

The mine is conducting a trial underground mining project as a result of positive outcomes by a conceptual study conducted in 2020. Managing Director, George Botshiwe says that Navachab’s expansion endeavours were brought about by the sucessful employee-driven turnaround strategy – aptly named Project Khaima (rise up in the local Damara language).

“Project Khaima enabled the mine to turnaround the unsustainable cost base which faced us in 2018 to a sustainable cashflow position, which has made the company self-funding and has enabled investment into rxpansion projects which are critical to the sustainability of the mine, ” Botshiwe says.

This trial underground mine comes at a cost of more than N$160 million and aims to employ 90 staff for the trial underground mining period. The trial mine is to run until the end of 2021 whereafter further studies will be conducted to assess underground mining viability.

Botshiwe says that “the trial mine and eventual underground mining will open up a huge opportunity for Navachab and places us on an upward trajectory like never before.

I would wish to thank the entire Navachab family for its resilience resulting in the success of the turnaround strategy which enabled the execution of this project. I would also wish to thank the Navachab Gold team involved in the project and our partners Murray & Roberts cementation team for their perserverance and hard work in realising the commencement of this historic endeavour.”

Navachab Gold Mine has additional expansion plans which will be revealed in due course.