Nearly a year after commissioning, Pan African Resources’ Mogale tailings retreatment (MTR) operation, in Mogale City, is looking back on the success of the project, which has been critical to local community development and environmental mitigation.
In 2022, Pan African acquired the asset from the liquidators of Mintails, and immediately embarked on the construction of the MTR, investing R2.5-billion to develop the plant that would ultimately process tailings from dumps.
By October 3, 2024, the MTR had been commissioned within 14 months – two months ahead of schedule and R100-million under budget – and by December 2024, the operations had ramped up to full production of 800 000 t a month.
Speaking to Mining Weekly on the sidelines of the relaunch of the MTR on Friday, which was attended by Mogale City local municipality mayor Councillor Lucky Godfrey Sele, MTR GM Oriel Shikwambana said that a game-changer for the development of the project was approaching it on an engineering, procurement and construction management basis.
This meant the team was in control of the execution, which enabled it to achieve the full construction ahead of time and below budget.
Further, the decision to leverage bolted construction of the carbon-in-leach tanks, instead of the standard welded contraction, saved the company about two months on the construction time.
Some 1 600 people were employed during the construction phase, with over 1 000 from the local community. Currently, there are 700 people on site – 200 are permanent employees.
In addition to environmental benefits of processing the tailings, the company’s social and labour plan and investments into schools and local community development projects, besides others, are having far-reaching local benefits and promoting local enterprise development. 
