We move 3.2 million
tonnes of rock a year.
Quietly.
Underground block caving means gravity does the heavy work. Less explosive, less surface disruption, less visible — but no less precise.
Where we operate
Kizumbi undercut level, 1,200 m depth
Why block caving?
We don't use open pits — too much surface damage, too permanent. Block caving lets gravity do the work: we undercut an ore body and it collapses in a controlled sequence.
Less explosive. Less dust. Less waste rock brought to surface. The downside? It requires two years of precision geological modelling before the first controlled collapse. We took those two years.
By comparison
Open pit mining
150+ hectares surface disturbance. Permanent landscape change. High dust generation.
Our block caving
4.2 hectares surface disturbance. 94% of tailings backfilled underground. No tailings dam.
The daily rhythm
Safety briefing
Every team, every day. No exceptions. If you miss it, you don't go underground.
Drilling begins
Sandvik twin-boom rigs. Each hole is 4 metres. Each placement is pre-modelled.
Blasting
Only in planned windows. Surrounding villages are notified by SMS the evening before.
Haul trucks
60-tonne trucks move broken ore to the surface tip. Drivers rotate every 2 hours.
Shift handover
Written, not verbal. No assumptions. Every anomaly is logged before the outgoing team leaves.
First trucks depart
Road convoys to the Kahama processing plant, 40 km west. No night road movement after 23:00.
Inside the processing plant
Once ore leaves the mine, it travels 40 km to Kahama. Seven steps separate rock from doré bar.
Crushing — broken to 12 mm pieces
Grinding — milled to 75 microns (fine as flour)
Leaching — cyanide solution, with full detox circuit downstream
Carbon adsorption — gold bonds to activated carbon
Elution & electrowinning — gold stripped from carbon, plated out
Smelting at 1,200 °C — poured as doré bars
Tailings filtered, dried, backfilled underground — no tailings dam
Kahama plant, leach circuit