Mining & Trade News

Local mineral exploration firm, Green Exploration, has expressed concern over lack of awareness on mining issues by communities within the company’s exploration areas describing it as the main challenge being faced by the company in its various license areas.

Exploration Geologist for the company Patrick Nansongole said in an interview at this year’s Malawi Mining Investment Forum in Lilongwe that most communities have no or little idea on the stages of mining projects as evidenced by their unrealistic demands for corporate social responsibility projects.

Nansongole said it is unfortunate to see some communities demanding development projects in the name of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) even though the project is at infant stage.

He said: “Most of the locals do not understand what exploration is. You go into the communities and they expect a lot of things as if you are mining.”

“Mining is a business indeed whereby at the end of the day you get something. But with exploration is different as it is more of investing in reserch.”

“You make a plan to travel to different sites, hire local people, and we are just spending, we are not getting anything from that.”

“Surprisingly, the community starts making demands which at some point tells us that there is a knowledge gap as they do not understand what exploration is and what it involves.”

Commenting on the future of mining in the country, Nansongole said the country has huge potential of developing through mining sector but what is needed is to scale up exploration work. Nansongole said many mineral potential sites in the country remain underexplored and conducting detailed exploration on such sites can help in boosting the mineral potential of the country.  

He said: “Having conducted exploration for three years and from the historical data from past exploration, indeed mining is viable in the country.”

“Malawi is very rich but the only challenge is that many areas are underexplored. For example, the copper ore that we have found in the north is just extension of copper belt of Zambia but the majority is not aware of that.”

“What should be done is more exploration. Much of our land is green area where none of the exploration has been done.”

Meanwhile, Green Exploration which is a subsidiary of ASX-listed DY6 Metals is carrying exploration works in all its four license areas including: The Machinga Rare Earth and Niobium Project which is ~40km East of Lindian’s (ASX: LIN) “Kangankunde”; the Salambidwe Rare Earth Project with limited previous exploration; the Ngala Hill Project located 35 km south-southwest of Blantyre in southern Malawi and; the Tundulu Project known with carbonatite ring complex with abundant REE mineralisation.

Recently, the Company announced that a review of historical drilling and trenching at the Tundulu Rare Earth and Phosphate project, has uncovered high-grade gallium mineralisation which has been identified from surface.

According to the announcement, a historical diamond and RC drilling, conducted during 2014 was assayed for gallium which discovered a total of 4901 assays for gallium and were completed with 27.7% of the assays containing >40 g/t Ga2O3.

Significant intersections have been calculated from the significant TREO intersections of grade of >5,000ppm over 5 metres.

Meanwhile, DY6 has commissioned preliminary metallurgical testwork to be undertaken on a select bulk sample from Tundulu to determine the suitability of the Tundulu deposit to produce a separate rare earth and phosphate concentrate, which is being undertaken by Auralia Metallurgy in Perth.

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