Caledonia Mining (LON:CMCL, TSE:CAL) has lifted the lid on last week's investment analyst visit to its Blanket gold mine in Zimbabwe.
The company said it has made progress since it revealed the revised mining plan last month, with the company saying the new central shaft, which will get round problems currently associated with only having a single shaft, has almost completed its pre-sinking stage.
The plan is to drill the shaft to a depth of 1,080 metres and have it fully operational by the middle of 2018.
The new tramming loop, completed in June 2015, is now up and running with the result that more material can be shifted; the effects can be seen by the fact that around 120,000 tonnes of ore were mined in the third quarter – a new record for the mine's underground operations.
Production is scheduled to start from the newly constructed Number 6 Winze in the first quarter of next year, with the intention of ramping up production to 500 tonnes per day by the end of 2017, before the central shaft becomes fully operational.
In all, the Number 6 Winze should contribute to the scheduled increase in production from 42,000 ounces in 2015 to 50,000 in 2016 and 65,000 ounces in 2017.