www.caledoniamining.com
Caledonia is an African focused mining and exploration company with an operating gold mine in Zimbabwe, two platinum-nickel exploration projects in South Africa and a cobalt-copper exploration project in Zambia amongst its exploration portfolio in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia .
Caledonia is listed on the TSX (CAL), and on AIM (CMCL).
Caledonia Mining targets gold production of 40,000 ounces this year from Blanket Mine
Caledonia Mining (LON:CMCL, TSX:CAL) is targeting gold production of 40,000 ounces this year from the Blanket Mine in Zimbabwe after a strong end to 2011.
Fourth quarter output was 10,533 ounces, up 8.1 per cent on the previous three months and 69 per cent on the same period last year.
Gold production for the calendar year was 35,826 ounces, more than double 2010 output, which totalled 17,707 ounces.
"Following a year in which Caledonia has increased production at Blanket by 102 per cent, we are now confident that we will be able to achieve our targeted gold production of 40,000 ounces for the current financial year,” the company said in statement to shareholders this morning.
“Discussions with the government of Zimbabwe regarding the indigenisation of the Blanket Mine have continued.”
Blanket is located 150 kilometres south of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city, and was acquired from Kinross Gold in 2006.
Since then chief executive Stefan Hayden’s team has carried out a number of development projects and equipment upgrades.
The biggest project was upgrading the Number 4 shaft, which alongside other smaller undertakings, have helped Caledonia more than double gold output.
This year refurbishment work was carried out on the 14, 18 and 22 level underground haulages, while the installation of an automatic cyanide measuring and dosing system on the carbon in leach circuit was commissioned.
This series of equipment upgrades has seen an incremental improvement to the mine’s performance and the benefits can now been seen in Caledonia’s bottom line.
Of all the improvements the installation of a diesel power plant was perhaps the most important.
It provides the mine and the entire metallurgical plant with a dependable supply of electricity.
It also gives the group the ability to carry on surface and underground operations in the event of blackouts.
Outside Zimbabwe, Caledonia has the Nama cobalt-copper exploration project in Zambia.
It consists of four large-scale, long-term, contiguous mining licences covering more than 800 square kilometres in one of the world premier locations for conventional copper-belt type mineralisation.
Drilling began in March and it is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
