Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Acacia Mining restarts operations at Bulyanhulu

DAILY NEWS Reporter
ACACIA Mining has restarted operations at its Bulyanhulu gold mine in Tanzania after resolving overheating problem at the plant. The gold mining


company operating in Tanzania said in a statement yesterday that the process plant at Bulyanhulu, one of three mines was now operating at normal throughput levels.
“Acacia is pleased to announce that it has resolved the previously disclosed issue of the overheating of the ball mill trunion bearing at Bulyanhulu and the process plant is now operating at normal throughput levels,” the mining company said in part.
“Further work will be carried out during a planned plant shutdown in Q4 2016 with a full bearing housing replacement to be installed during 2017 to provide a life of mine solution,” the company HQ’ed in London announced.
Acacia said guidance for Bulyanhulu remains unchanged and is and at a group level it continues to expect third quarter production to be broadly in line with Q1 2016, with unchanged full year production guidance of at least 780,000 ounces of gold.
Barrick Gold is reported to be in talks to sell its 64 per cent steak in Acacia and could receive around $1.9 billion for the company, which also has exploration projects in Tanzania and other African countries.
The potential buyers named by Reuters sources are Harmony Gold Mining Co Ltd, Sibanye Gold Ltd, AngloGold Ashanti Ltd, Randgold & Exploration Co and Gold Fields Ltd, all of them based in South Africa.
It is said that some unnamed Australian and North American miners could also be interested in the African company. Meanwhile, Acacia Mining’s Buzwagi Gold Mine has set aside 600,000 US dollars (about 1.2bn/-) for tree planting in Kahama District, reports ABDUEL ELINANZA. The mine Sustainability Manager, George Mkanza, said the mine set to plant 1.6 million trees starting this rain season.
“We (Buzwagi) will not plan those trees rather paying for planters as a community income generation facility,” Mr Mkanza told the ‘Daily News’ during a reporters tour of the mine today. The programme involving giving trees to planters and the mine will pay for every tree growing to some acceptable level.
The planter will be given the task of watering the trees and protecting them from drying out. Kahama receives 700 milliliters of rain a year.
Also the district faces trees declining trend which do not match with planting ratio. Last year Buzwagi constructed 15 deep boreholes around Mwendakulima communities that surround the mine.
On top of that it built a health centre at Mwendakulima which is the first such centre for Kahama municipality. The health centre has the capacity to receive over 70 outpatients a day. At the moment the centre has some 25 staff.
The centre is powered by solar power, with rain water collection and storage systems and has staff house. Mwendakulima Health Centre went into operations last December and was full furnished by Buzwagi mine.
The mine constructed another primary school for Budushi community that took its first standard one pupils in July. Under corporate social responsibility (CSR), Buzwagi constructed three full fledged primary schools and one secondary school, about five secondary school laboratories.
It also constructed 5.0 km of tarmac road and 12km of gravel road in Kahama. The low grade mine spent some 1.6 million US dollars a year on CSR projects

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