Blyvoor Gold Mine

 mine, gold mine

Blyvooruitzicht Gold Mine was established in 1937 and it was the first mine in the West Wits Line, and Blyvooruitzicht can be translated as “happy prospect” in Afrikaans. First production started in 1942 under the ownership of Blyvooruitzicht Gold Mining Company Limited. In 1964 Gencor limited, formerly General Mining Union Corporation Limited, merged with Strathmore Consolidated Investments then gained control of Blyvoor. Randgold & Exploration Company Limited then purchased Blyvoor from Gencor in September 1997 and subsequently formed the Durban Roodepoort Deep Group (DRDGOLD), which was the result of the merging of Durban Roodepoort Deep Limited and Blyvooruitzicht Gold Mining Company Limited (and Buffelsfontein Gold Mines Limited).

Village Main Reef then acquired Blyvoor in June 2012 under the terms of an agreement reached between the company and DRDGOLD, which still gave DRD interest in the mine. Village invested around R190 million in the mine to sustain operations but in the last 3 months leading up to July 2013 the mine lost R88 million, with continued monthly losses prior to that. On July 31, 2013 Village announced they would suspend funding to Blyvoor and this led to a dispute betwen Village and DRD with both parties eventually abandoning the mine. Subsequently the mine went into liquidation with Harvard Corporate Recovery Services being the company to manage the process.

A company called Goldrich Holdings bought the mine out of liquidation and attempted to operate it. However they did not fulfill the conditions of the purchase and did not pay the mine workers for several months. At that point the liquidator approached the South Gauteng High Court which subsequently voided the sale and Goldrich was ordered to vacate the mine. It was found that Goldrich had ties to Aurora Empowerment Systems, which was part of the failed attempted ownerhsip of Orkney gold mine. Goldrich was also ordered to pay outstanding costs to affected parties. No other buyers came forward and the mine was left abandoned and over years scavengers stripped anything of value from the mine buildings and infrastructure. Illegal miners also descended on the mine causing and increase in crime.

Part of the mine was the community of Blyvooruitzicht which was built to house employees of the mine. Upon closure of the mine, and because it was on private property, the government did not recognize the community and cut off water and power, which was restored. However, the community still struggles to keep those utilities connected. Crime is also a problem as many illegal miners came to Blyvoor causing problems in the community. A published FIDH and LHR report noted that since the mines closure there was a widespread and precipitous decline in both environmental and socio-economic standards.

Good news finally came for Blyvoor in 2015 when Randlord Consolidated Mines, chaired by South African mining entrepreneur Peter Skeat, took over the control of the mine. Then on March 17, 2016 they announced they would spend more than spend more than R100 million reviving surface operations at the mine. The dump to be mined contains about 400,000 ounces of gold at a grade of 0.01 ounce a ton. Proceeds from that operation will then be used to restart underground operations, where Randlord estimates that up to 9 million ounces of gold remain and can ultimately be recovered.They also believe that there is huge exploration potential which could lead to a resource of up to 40 million ounces.

Blyvoor infrastructure included six shafts, a gold plant, uranium plant, a no less than eleven tailing storage facilities which contain gold bearing slimes. There was also a small surface operation. However, as noted previously, most of that infrastructure has been destroyed by illegal miners and scavengers.

A key reason why previous operators such as DRDGold and Village Main Reef could not make the mine profitable was because they had to pump water from mined-out areas to access the gold. After the operation went into liquidation, AngloGold Ashanti had no choice but to take overpumping costs to avoid the rising water flooding their nearby mines.

Regionally Blyvoor is located in the Witwatersrand Basin which is a late Archean-aged basin that is comprised of an inter-bedded sequence of arenaceous and argillaceous sediments. The basin is located on the Kaapvaal Craton and is 6 km thick, 300 km wide from northest to southwest, and 100 km wide northeast to southwest. All sections of the basin except the northern section are overlain by 4km of volcanic and sedimentary rocks from the Archaean, Proterozoic and Mesozoic period. Locally the geology consists the gold bearing Carbon Leader Reef (CLR) and the Middelvlei Reef which is typcially 75 m above the VCR.