Marula Mining, an African focused mining and development company, has provided an update on its Blesberg lithium and tantalum mine in South Africa, where it has secured new mobile mining equipment for ZAR20 million (about US$1.2 million) from Bell Equipment Ltd through its partnership with Q Global, one of South Africa’s leading independent commodity, mining, logistics and investment funds.
The arrival of this new equipment in Q2 2023 to the Blesberg mine site, secured under standard hire purchase arrangements, will provide the opportunity for the company’s mining contractors to more than double the capacity to mine the stockpiled material and commence activities on the underlying hard rock resources in the identified pegmatites.
The new mining equipment includes a Kobelco SK380XDLC excavator, a JCB 3CX backhoe loader, two new JCB 456ZX wheel loaders, and two new Bell B25E articulated dump trucks which are scheduled to start to arrive on site later in April 2023.
Movement of this stockpiled material will also allow the company to commence an initial resource drilling program that is scheduled to start at Blesberg later in Q2 2023 and will form part of the company’s plans to establish a hard rock open cast lithium mining operation. The availability of this new mining equipment on site will also allow Marula to accelerate its plans to commence development and mining of the underlying hard rock resources contained in the pegmatites.
Jason Brewer, Marula Mining PLC CEO said: “We are excited to have secured this new mining equipment, which has come about through our strengthening and broad partnership that we are building with Q Global. The confidence we now have given this relationship with Q Global has really given us the opportunity to commit to this new equipment and secure it in a timely and very costs effective manner.”
He adds: “This equipment will have a major impact on our operations at Blesberg, and allow us to increase the movement of the existing stockpiles and accelerate work on the planned resources drilling program and mine planning for development of the resources within the pegmatites. I previously stated that our new relationship with Q Global would mean we can accelerate and further develop the assets we have in our portfolio, and I believe this is a clear indication of the value of this relationship.”
