Coffey Mining, a global specialist consultancy company, is helping to find workable strategies to restore the Mbuji Mayi mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to its former glory, leaving the region’s history of conflict behind. It was once among the top producing diamond operations in the world but, ravaged by civil war, it is now a shadow of its former self. The DRC has historically produced around 10 Mct of mainly industrial diamonds each year since the 1960s, which were exported to the international marketplace. But production declined sharply after 2000 and then collapsed to less than 1 Mct in 2007.
Dr Norman Lock, Senior Principal Consultant and Regional Manager for Coffey Mining in Canada, is overseeing the plan to restore the mine and rebuild the region’s ailing diamond industry. He said the challenges posed by the legacy of war, including displaced populations and pervasive poverty, would require holistic solutions that addressed not only operational issues but social and economic ones as well. Lock: “This is one of the world’s best known diamond mines and it has been in decline because of its political and economic history.
“We are giving technical assistance to the financiers to help them in their decision of whether to fund this mine but we can’t develop just a technical solution alone. Any money poured into that would be like water in the sand. We also need to look at social issues in the region like poverty, which have contributed to the decline of the mine. About half of the actual productivity from the concession area has been legitimate legal mining. The other half has been illegal mining from artisanal mines. Any action to try and stop that is going to run up against tremendous resistance from the local community so this is an issue that will have to be addressed somehow.
“The mine is also dramatically overstaffed. If this was a fully operational modern mine, it would have a complement of around 500 staff but it currently has over 5,000. Therein lies a problem. The local community is dependent on this mine and they are going to be laying off two to three thousand people.”
He said part of the strategy for managing the mine in future would have to include plans to ensure the economic future of the local people. “A retrenchment program needs to look at ways of working with the local community to provide retraining for workers,” he said. “This is key to the long term success of the operation and the mine has been forced to recognise that reality.”
On the technical front, Lock said the mine was faced with three main hurdles; inadequate documentation, poor environmental performance and aging infrastructure. He said the first task would be making some determination about the value of the concession, a task hampered by outdated record keeping. “Before you start spending money on a mine, you first have to establish whether the resource base is worth going after,” he said. “The mine concession contains 13 kimberlite pipes of varying sizes up to 25 ha so the indications are that high value deposits remain to be exploited. But the documentation of previous studies dates back to the early 1990s when records were kept on paper rather than electronically, so conducting a meaningful audit of years of paper records is a job of an order and magnitude that is probably impossible. It’s likely that we will have to carry out some further testing at the mine site so we can be entirely comfortable with the quality of the information we’re working with.”
Dr Lock said the mine also needed to look at its environmental performance because when considering whether to grant funding, the banks were bound by the equator principles; a framework for banks to manage environmental and social issues in project financing. “The biggest issue is that when the mine asked for finance, it didn’t even know what the word environmental meant,” he said. “The mine has been operating in the same way it was back in the 1950s so they have some archaic practices in place. For example, basically the tailings are pumped straight into the river, which is a big no-no.
“We are treating this as the first of the remedial actions that need to be taken and finance will only be approved subject to this work being undertaken. Fortunately the mine is embracing the process and moving ahead with it as quickly as possible.”
He said the decrepit infrastructure at the mine would be the main item of expenditure at the outset. “There are huge infrastructure needs at the site; the geology needs to be cleaned up and it needs a new mining fleet and a completely new plant, which is going to cost a large amount of money,” Dr Lock said. “Several attempts to access funding for necessary production improvements have been made in the last few years but with very limited success due to the political history of the DRC, illegal mining and poor security leading to a downward spiral of falling production and revenue.
“We are anticipating that a more holistic approach to managing the economic and social issues at the mine – as well as the technical ones – will increase the mine’s chances of success.”
Dr Lock said the project was an exciting opportunity for Coffey Mining to make a difference to people’s lives in this recovering region, still suffering from the scars of war and economic crisis. “A lot of things have gone badly wrong in the local mining sector but there is now a restructuring opportunity and a will that goes beyond the wars and strife,” Dr Lock said. “People want to bring this mine back into its former productivity in a way that benefits the community. This links up to Coffey’s broad vision for solving emerging challenges to improve the lives of communities. If we can help them find a way to achieve this, it will be a really good news story for us to talk about for some time to come.”