Capital Limited has entered a conditional open-pit waste mining services contract with Sukari Gold Mines and has also expanded and extended its existing drilling contract with Sukari.
Sukari is the operating company for the Sukari gold mine, in Egypt, one of the largest gold mines in Africa and the principal asset of Centamin.
Collectively, the contracts are anticipated to deliver incremental revenues of $235-260 million over a four-year period, commencing January 1, 2021, representing the largest award of new business in the company’s history.
The 120 Mt open-pit waste mining contract at Sukari will see Capital provide load and haul and ancillary services over a period of four years. At the same time, the existing drilling contract at Sukari has been extended to December 31, 2024 (from September 30, 2023) and expanded by nine additional blasthole rigs, bringing the rigs operating at Sukari to 24 in total.
To date, Capital has spent $23.4 million towards equipment and has made strong progress with early works, key personnel hiring and advanced operational planning, it said. It has also signed an OEM facility with Sandvik for $8.5 million and an OEM facility with Epiroc is awaiting final credit approval with documentation in near final form.
Jamie Boyton, Executive Chairman, said: “The winning of the tender for the Sukari open-pit waste mining contract is a significant milestone for Capital – it is the largest contract win for the group since inception, adds substantial scale to our mining services division, as well as providing revenue diversification from our drilling services business.
“We are also pleased to have increased the scope and scale of our existing drilling contract. Having operated at the Sukari mine since 2005, which started commercial gold production over a decade ago, Capital is pleased to be deepening further its strong client relationship with Centamin in assisting with the generation of significant value to Centamin over the medium and longer term as the Sukari mine enters its next phase of gold production.”
Martin Horgan, CEO of Centamin, said: “With the focus on improving operational flexibility at Sukari, introducing contract mining over the next few years for waste stripping in the open pit is cost and time effective. Following a rigorous tender process, Capital was determined to be the best suited to deliver what is needed.
“Capital is a trusted contractor to the company, with a strong understanding of Sukari and the operating environment, including the employment of local workforce and established training programs, consistent with Centamin’s approach to local workforce development.”
As part of this increased open-pit waste stripping program, Centamin continues to use its existing owner operator fleet, which has capacity of 80-90 Mt/y total material moved (ore and waste). The company said it conducted an independent contract mining tender process to assess incremental contract waste stripping costs, and capacity, against the cost to expand the current owner-operator mining fleet.
Centamin added: “It was concluded that the optimal integration of contract mining was to isolate the waste stripping workstream on the East wall of the open pit, thereby limiting the day-to-day interaction with the operations and simplifying operational oversight and planning from a health, safety and logistical standpoint. The East wall waste stripping program will move material to a dedicated waste dump.”
