Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Q: First, the RNS at the time said the company intended to work hard to ensure security and all government clearances were in place within months . Why was this not achieved and why are we more confident now? Secondly, how have we not needed to raise more money to have kept working on so many fronts for the past twelve months? I fear we are going into large debts.
A: As regards the readiness of government in Ethiopia (for our project launch), we had many oral assurances twelve months ago and it is fair to say that the implementation belatedly started flowing early this year after organizational changes within government. Unfortunately we cannot take short cuts on security and certain key requirements for providing finance. But fortunately these requirements are now well and truly being implemented. The project has the highest levels of government focus and support now, for which we are very grateful and now work hard to launch.
As regards the company’s spending rate and use of debt, we have indeed worked hard to make progress but still be very frugal pending key milestones being achieved (notably in respect of the Tulu Kapi financing). For example, our service providers are largely payable at finance closing and our partners keep funding directly into the projects. The unsecured advances drawn are only half the levels we have used previously when we got up to c.GBP3 million. We greatly appreciate the confidence and support of our service providers and partners and of course the parties who provide unsecured advances.
We understand the frustration and anticipation and can assure that all parties, including government, are indeed finally formalising approvals in synch. It will shortly be seen to have all been worthwhile.
@kefiminerals
have a FOURTH major deposit on their hands. This is unheard of for a mining junior.
Al Godeyer is estimated to contain 8'100 tonnes copper, 7'200 tonnes zinc, 60'000 oz gold & 284'600 oz Silver.
All whilst being open at depth.
Maiden Al Godeyer Inferred Open-Pit Mineral Resource Estimate of 1.35 million tonnes ("Mt") at 0.6% copper, 0.54% zinc, 1.4g/t gold and 6.6g/t silver potentially complements the Inferred Resources reported for the Open-Pit Scenario at the nearby Hawiah deposit of 11.1Mt, as announced by KEFI on 9 January 2023.
· Al Godyer continues to be open at depth and along strike
· This reaffirms the potential for an initial open-pit mining operation at Hawiah as does early oxide metallurgical testwork which indicates that the Al Godeyer ore can be processed at the Hawiah plant located 12km from the site.
· Drilling planned to commence in Q2 2023 will be aimed at converting unclassified areas of the deposit to the Inferred category and to further test the strike extent of the orebody.
· Concurrent drilling planned at Hawiah will focus on upgrading and further expanding its total resources reported on 9 January 2023 of 29.0 Mt at 0.89% copper, 0.94% zinc, 0.67 g/t gold and 10.1 g/t silver.
This Al Godeyer maiden copper-zinc-gold-silver Mineral Resource has confirmed the clear potential to support the Hawiah project, at this stage lifting to over 12Mt the total tonnage being considered for the Open-Pit Scenario.
"Feedback from the early metallurgical testwork is particularly exciting and demonstrates the amenability of Al Godeyer to provide additional open pit feed material to the proposed Hawiah Complex.
"The work completed at Al Godeyer further demonstrates our ability to discover and rapidly advance projects in our ever-growing exploration portfolio within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with the GMCO team taking the Al Godeyer target from a mineral occurrence to a JORC compliant resource in a little over a year.
"Elsewhere within the Kingdom, the Jibal Qutman project is advancing on schedule with our aim to start construction by the end of 2023. The Hawiah Pre-feasibility Study is currently being finalised and drilling is set to shortly recommence on the Hawiah site. This drilling is primarily focused on converting Inferred Resources to the Indicated category, but is also aiming at extending the planned mine life by further increasing the Hawiah Mineral Resource in a few key areas.
"KEFI has very exciting growth prospects in both Saudi Arabia and in Ethiopia, where our working environments have improved enormously over the past 18 months."
n his responses, the PM also indicated that there is an ongoing effort to resolve the near five-years old militarized conflict in the Oromia regional state that pitted federal and regional forces on the one hand and members of Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) on the other.
The need to resolve the conflict was raised by MPs from Oromia with two MPs explicitly asking the PM to respond if there were any efforts to resolve the conflict following recent calls for peaceful resolutions, including from the Oromia regional state President, Shimelis Abdissa.
Although the Prime Minister appeared to repeat his previous stance when accusing the rebels of not being “a united force”, he admitted that the recent call for peace from the Oromia regional state was decided at a party level with a formation of a committee. “The call is a continuation of that” he said, adding that “more than ten [rounds of] talks were conducted in the past.”
According to him, the approaches to resolve conflicts through talks have resulted in engagements with the Kemant and Agewo, Benishangul Gumuz and Gambella armed groups.
The OLA was designated as a terrorist organization by members of the Ethiopian parliament on May 05 2021 along with the TPLF after a decision on May 01 by the Council of Ministers that approved the resolution to designate the groups as terrorist organizations. Last week, Lencho Letta, a retired veteran Oromo politician and one of the early founders of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), called out on the federal government to remove the terrorism designation from the OLA, which the government refers to as “Shene”.
In the coming days
This update encompasses the activities of KEFI Minerals (Ethiopia) Ltd ("KME") and Tulu Kapi Gold Mines Share Company ("TKGM") in Ethiopia, and Gold & Minerals Ltd ("GMCO") in Saudi Arabia, since release of the Q4 2022 Quarterly Update on 2 February 2023 and is being announced ahead of the end of the quarter to facilitate discussions at various events in Ethiopia and the Middle East in the coming days.
TKGM now has the intense attention of the Ethiopian Ministry of Mines, National Bank of Ethiopia and the other Ministries and agencies and expects to resolve all outstanding issues in the coming weeks, so that the syndicate can then proceed to seek all-party formal approvals including KEFI shareholder approval. Upon all approvals being formally confirmed, we can then proceed with drawdowns and Project launch so as to be in full production by mid-2025.