Firestone Restarts Operations at Linghobong Mine After 2-Year Pause

Firestone has reported the successful resumption of operations at the Liqhobong Mine after a two and-a-half-year care and maintenance period which commenced from March 2020. Firestone management remained mindful that any potential restart of activities would be required to take place at minimal cost and in the shortest possible timeframe. To achieve this, a number of work-streams were run in parallel, including, particularly, appointing a long-term mining contractor and essential staff.
Due to the progress made with the lenders by mid-May 2022, a decision was made on 7 July 2022 to restart operations at the Mine. The long-term mining contractor, TCL was appointed shortly thereafter, and up to 97% of their former-staff members were contacted and re-appointed to their former positions ensuring operational continuity.

A structured restart program was adopted, which provided that each section of the production plant (which had been maintained by the small on-site maintenance team during care and maintenance period) was thoroughly tested, first on a dry run basis, followed by increased load with the introduction of water, a process called wet commissioning. During the care and maintenance period, and to prepare the Mine for the shortest possible restart time, a stockpile of 245,000 tonnes of previously blasted ore was reworked to the required size using existing equipment that was on-site. The 245,000 tonnes were estimated to provide feedstock for a period of 60 days. This allowed TCL sufficient time to mobilize, and site establish its extensive fleet of excavators, loaders and dump-trucks ahead of commencing full-scale mining operations which have been ongoing since October, 1st, 2022.

During Q3, Liqhobong treated 136, 963 tonnes of ore and moved 199 654 tonnes of waste as part of the restart program. A total of 34 997 carats was recovered at a grade of 25.6 cpht which was higher than the planned grade of 17.7 cpht, due to processing historic tailings material which contained a high quantity of smaller, lower quality diamonds.

Photo Credit: Firestone

Source: Firestone