Impact evaluation of mining project: A congolese gold mine case study

Mining projects are capital intensive and practically irreversible endeavours with long, but often limited economic duration. Twangiza Mining (TM) is the one of the most advanced gold mining projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). TM, a subsidiary of the Canadian company Banro Corporation, launched a project in 2012 to address the production hurdles and challenges that prevented the company's process plant from achieving the design target of 1.3 Millions Tonnes/annum (MT/pa). The Twangiza Mining Optimizing and Expansion Project (TMOEP) aimed not only to address the processing plant challenges but also to expand the plant to process 1.7 Mtpa. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the impact of TMOEP on the processing plant production and economic key indicators from the commissioning of the processing plant to December 2015. This case study uses documentation review and the direct observation of the researcher as research methods in order to achieve the aims of this paper. The research finds that the process plant ore throughput has significantly increased to achieve 1,714 MT/pa. This paper also finds that the moisture content of the ore has been reduced even though the plant recovery is still struggling to improve. Moreover, the processing plant economic indicators analyzed, namely the cost per tonne milled and the cash cost per ounce, are both showing a positive trend. Although these results are satisfactory, the research recommends to sustain the momentum gained with the implempentation of the TMOEP. Sustainability recommendations are made based on international best practices.