The secondary target is chrysotile from Kobolondo, based in Bulembu, Eswatini.  It is primarily a rehabilitation project which comprises a 25.1 million ton surface tailings resource adjacent to the defunct Havelock Opencast Asbestos Mine.  A SAMVAL compliant CPR has been completed.  Kobolondo will have its own concentration plant and will despatch magnesium silicate to a processing plant for the production of magnesium hydroxide.  Due to historic delays, SMI has reapplied for the mining license on the request of the Swazi Minerals Management Board.

 

The Kobolondo tailings come from mid-Archaean volcanic-sedimentary rocks which are entirely engulfed in intrusive granitoid rocks.  The Havelock Mine is hosted in the uppermost division of the Onverwacht Group in the south-eastern part of the Barberton Greenstone Belt, consisting of mafic and ultramafic to felsic lithologies. Chrysotile asbestos orebodies occur in an allochthonous serpentinised dunite-harzburgite complex (the Havelock Ultramafic Body) as stockwork of cross-fibre seams.

 

Chrysotile, together with lizardite, are the dominant magnesium-bearing minerals. The Project is not a true exploration project as the content of the TSFs is known as the material was deposited by the previous mining operations. RC drilling was completed as Mineral Resource drilling rather than exploration drilling to improve Mineral Resource classification. No further exploration has taken place or is identified as a requirement.

 

Conventional load and haul activities to extract material from the East TSF where no blasting is required.   The project is equipped with various supporting infrastructure, including office buildings, potable water supply, an access road to site, laydown areas, stores and workshop buildings, water storage facilities, tailing storage facilities, parking areas and partial electrical supply via national grid. 

The plant consists of dual stage wash screening, three stage spiralling and thickening which can produce magnesium silicate concentrate.

 

The Mineral Resource and Reserves (for the Kobolondo Project’s first phase only) is -