Harare Bureau
RioZim Limited will approach shareholders for equity funding to resuscitate mining at its Cam and Moto Mine project. Management contends that the project will significantly improve prospects of the business and impact on its share price.
“The finer details of the proposed right issue will be provided in due course,” RioZim said in a statement yesterday.

Early this year RioZim floated tenders for contract mining at Cam and Motor, targeting contract gold miners with capacity to extract 270,000 ounces per month.

Work to be undertaken included open cast mining of the sequence of clearing, drilling and blasting, over-burden mine clearing, drilling and blasting ore and ore mining.

Cam and Motor is situated 130 kilometres south west of Harare, and about 10 kilometres east of Kadoma. The mine was once the country’s biggest gold mine and has produced a cumulative 150 tonnes of gold to date.

The main ore bodies were exploited by the Cam and Motor Gold Mining Company, previous owners of the mine.

According to RioZim, these are the Motor Lode, Cam Lode and Petrol Lode. Operations were stopped in 1968 due to viability constraints, with gold price at $35 per oz.

At that stage the mine cut off grade was 8 grammes per tonne and it is believed that there are significant gold resources close to the old workings likely viable to mine.

Sixty-five holes totalling over 7,000m over two phases have been drilled at the mine. Phase one drilling totalling 2,775m was drilled from February to July 2009, at Motor section.

RioZim said that from this drilling, a resource totalling 1,290,744 tonnes at a grade of 4,26g/t and containing 171,545oz of gold have so far been determined.

Phase two drilling has been undertaken on the Cam Lode with 16 holes totalling 1,767 metres having been drilled.

RioZim said by the end of March 2010, the resource indication was about 3,500,000 open pittable tonnes at grade 4,5g/t yielding 500,000oz delineated to a depth of 100m on Cam, Motor and Petrol ore bodies of the mine.

A deep drilling programme was commenced in April 2010 to determine the resources between 100m and 400m depths.

The new Cam and Motor facility was expected to be opened in August with projected monthly production of 4,000oz.

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