Caledonia purchases another Gold mine
Caledonia Mining Corporation has continued on its expansion drive recently concluding the purchase of Bulawayo Mining Company (BMC) owned Motapa Gold Mine 75 km from Bulawayo.
Rudairo Mapuranga
With a recent purchase of Maligreen as well as a sale and purchase agreement to acquire Bilboes, Caledonia has almost cemented its position of becoming Zimbabwe’s biggest gold miner.
The Motapa Project was formerly owned and explored by AngloAmerican Zimbabwe before its exit from the Zimbabwean gold sector in the late 1990s. The Project is approximately 75km north of Bulawayo with a mining lease covering approximately 2,200hectares.
According to Caledonia Chief Executive Officer Mark Learmonth, the company considers Motapa to be highly prospective and strategically important to its growth ambitions in Zimbabwe in terms of both location and scale.
He said Motapa is a large exploration property which is contiguous to the Bilboes gold project. Caledonia announced that it had entered into a binding sale and purchase agreement in July 2022.
Learmonth is optimistic that since the Motapa asset has been mined throughout most of the second half of the 20th century and during this period, the region produced as much as 300,000oz of gold. Whilst none of the mining infrastructures remains, the evidence of historical mining will guide the Caledonia exploration team in best understanding the prospectivity of the region.
“We are pleased to have concluded the purchase of Motapa. Given its large scale, excellent geological prospectivity and its strategic location adjacent to Bilboes, Motapa was a high-priority acquisition for Caledonia. We look forward to developing an exploration program for Motapa as we target a large-scale gold belt surrounding the Bilboes project.
“With the central shaft at Blanket now fully operational and production targeting 80,000 ounces of gold per year, we anticipate that we will deploy the incremental cash flow arising from Blanket into our exciting exploration and project development portfolio in Zimbabwe.
“The acquisition of Motapa following the signing of a sale and purchase agreement to acquire Bilboes and the acquisition of Maligreen demonstrates that over the last 12 months Caledonia has established a pipeline of high-quality exploration and development projects. This is in addition to the potential for further growth at Blanket where we are optimistic about its exploration potential,” Learmonth said.