JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – He was born in Roodepoort but never imagined that one day he would be mining gold in Roodepoort, now the site of Qala Shallows, the first new underground gold mine to be built in South Africa in 15 years.

He was convinced all the gold had been mined out. But that was the furthest thing from the truth.

The thousands of tons of gold ore that he is extracting are being turned into gold bar that is being sold at a time of high gold price, which is helping to fund ongoing development.

He is Sam Molefi, the CEO of Modi Mining, the contracting company that is mining the gold at Qala Shallows, ASX-listed West Wits Mining’s Roodepoort operation, which is located a mere 15 km from Johannesburg, the City of Gold.

Molefi and his co-entrepreneur wife, Motlapele Molefi, head a business that could well be putting many more people to work in the not-too-distant future. (Also watch the attached Creamer Media video.)

“For me, contributing in a meaningful way to the livelihoods of our communities, our neighbours, is a key achievement and something that I never thought could happen,” Molefi confided in his interview with Mining Weekly.

“We’ve already created 193 jobs, and we're ramping up to about 1 000, and more people will be sourced from the local communities. Every time I look at my birth certificate and see the word Roodepoort, it excites me.”

He was raised in Dobsonville, Soweto, and used to catch a taxi from Dobsonville to Wits Technikon, where he began his mining studies.

“For me it's a blessing, and I thank God,” said Molefi, who looks forward to the creation of local job opportunities for local communities.

“Every now and then, when I'm back home and can see that there is a lot of unemployment and disparities in our communities, I think this mine will come in handy to alleviate some of that.”

Modi Mining’s corporate social investment programme targets enterprise development and the company is already engaged in business relationships with local suppliers.

“Since we last spoke in 2022, we’ve been able to establish the mine. The infrastructure you see on surface and underground was installed by us.”

A milestone was its ability to achieve an early supply of 10 000 t of gold ore used for West Wits’ first gold pour in March.

“We’re now building up to steady state mining, and a key milestone has been the safe installation of water, power and air reticulation services,” Molefi reported.

Last week, when level two was intercepted, historic tons plus some reserve ore was unlocked. “The highlight of this phase was when the tons were delivered to the plant, processed, and out there, gold bars were being poured and delivered.”

The completion of the 1 West Decline into this area of historic 2 Level unmined stopes transitioned the project from development ore into higher-grade production areas with established underground infrastructure already in place.

The 1 West Decline forms part of a planned optimisation of the original mine plan and is specifically designed to accelerate payback, improve capital efficiency and further strengthen the overall project business case.

Mining Weekly: What are tasks that must still be carried out by Modi on this contract?

We still need to advance the main decline to greater depth. We have advanced from level one to level two, which needs to be made safe. The team is already doing the assessments there to see how much of the backlog tons are lying in there and how many of the unmined blocks are available. Further to that, we continue developing down, because we need to go to three level, four level, and we need to scope and scale the mine, because we need to reach the steady state of about 50 000 t a month. The ramp-up to that will come with developing and advancing the declines and ensuring that we create more ore blocks. We're going to need to provide more ventilation and more water services underground as we grow the mine and proceed further to the third and fourth levels and continue creating face lengths, extracting ore and bringing it to the surface.

West Wits has continued to advance underground rehabilitation and production-readiness activities, including support rehabilitation in the main decline, underground water management initiatives and the establishment of additional operational flexibility within the mine plan.

The operational focus remains on increasing underground development rates and establishing sustainable production conditions as the company advances toward steady-state operations.

SCOPING STUDY

As reported by Mining Weekly earlier this week, West Wits has extended the timeframe for completing an updated scoping study at Qala Shallows by a month to the end of July, owing to the company's strategic decision to broaden the study's scope and assess multiple development pathways across the Witwatersrand Basin project, of which Qala Shallows is the flagship development.

The mine is designed to produce 70 000 oz/y of gold for 17 years.

The expanded study is expected to evaluate three to four potential development scenarios, including the construction of a standalone processing plant; the use of third-party processing infrastructure through strategic partnerships; and the potential integration of additional ore sources and future mining areas beyond the current Qala Shallows mine plan.

A binding term sheet for a senior loan facility of up to a R875-million, which has been secured by West Wits, is to be provided by South Africa’s Absa and Nedbank Corporate and Investment Banking (CIB). This replaces the funding arrangement with South Africa’s State-owned Industrial Development Corporation and Absa, which was announced in June last year.

With its access to a broader range of banking products and services, the new facility is expected to better support West Wits’ development timeline and strategic growth objectives.

Absa and Nedbank CIB described the Qala Shallows gold project as a development that would drive local job creation, economic growth, and sustainable mining in the Witwatersrand basin, the largest and most prolific gold deposit in human history.

Discovered in 1886, the ancient basin spanning 300 km by 160 km has yielded more than 1.5-billion ounces of gold in the past 140 years.