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Joint ventures announced for gold mining in Mozambique
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The Canadian based Pan African Mining Corporation has announced the formation of a joint venture with the company, Manica Minerals Ltd, to mine gold in Casula and Fingoe in the western Mozambique province of Tete. Manica Minerals is controlled by John Gurney, a professor of geochemistry at the University of Cape Town, and his mining engineer colleague, Peter Hildebrand.
According to a press release from Pan African Mining, the Canadian company will spend at least $159,000 on each project in the first two years. Casula is an area where mining of gold and copper took place sporadically in the 20th century, but didn’t go deeper than 80
metres.
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Nine mining licenses have been granted, eight of them to Manica minerals, in the 87,000 hectares that constitute the Casula area. The statement says that the occurrence of gold is associated with quartz veining, and at Casula quartz veining can be up to several metres thick. Pan African Mining says that a sampling programme is now under way to target the old workings, shears and zones of alteration. It has also hired the South African company, Remote Exploration Services, to undertake a more general geochemical sampling programme.
As for Fingoe, this is an area with very little previous prospecting, but there are known occurrences of gold, and Pan African Mining claims there is good potential for viable discoveries.
Manica Minerals has been granted four prospecting licenses, covering about 45,000 hectares. Pan African Mining's Chief Executive Officer, Irwin Olian, said his company felt that Casula and Fingoe "are both highly prospective gold properties with potential to
host significant commercial deposits".
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