Minrom Consulting was recently contacted by a well-known manganese mine in the Northern Cape to perform scope and execute a Mining Work Programme (MWP).
Estimate remaining resources using 3D geological modelling
MINROM recently reviewed a feldspar project from a historical mining project situated in the Limpopo province of South Africa. The mine focussed on the extraction of feldspar from a large zoned feldspar-mica pegmatite body. These historical mining operations involved a combination of open-pit and underground mining methods.
MINROM performed a review of the historical data and developed a 3D geological model from the old data with an aim to estimate the remaining resources within the mining licence area.
Feldstar project located in the ancient greenstone belts
The project is located on the north-eastern edge of the Kaapvaal Craton. The region contains various metamorphosed volcano-sedimentary greenstone belt sequences, namely the Murchison, Pietersburg, Sutherland, and Rhenosterkoppies greenstone belts.
These ancient greenstone belts generally consist of greenschist to amphibolite facies meta-sedimentary assemblages hosted within approximately 3,00 Ga tonalitic-trondhjemitic gneisses and numerous intrusive plutons intruded approximately 2,65 Ga. The feldspar mineralisation is associated with these intrusive plutons in the form of late stage pegmatites.
Remaining ore and mined material estimated for proposed mining operations
The volume of the ore and the mined material could be estimated, and the remaining available in-situ resources were identified for consideration of future mining. MINROM’s client could now efficiently plan and economically model any proposed mining operations, thereby minimizing the historical risks previously associated with the project. Further exploration drilling is required to update the resources. MINROM is looking forward to executing an managing this exploration programme for our client.
Figure 3 – Sample and site photographs