Trigon Metals CEO Jed Richardson says the dewatering at Kombat Mine has reached level 8, and they will be able to start mining when they reach level 7.
In a YouTube briefing Monday, Richardson said the underground looks pristine with no rock falls and no areas that need rehabilitation.
Richardson said they were evacuating water at over 2 200m3 per hour.
Since the dewatering exercise started in September 2023, Richardson said they had evacuated water to level 240m, level 8 from the surface.
“We are now pumping out all the old workings, all the old tunnels, the old shaft. Literally, just cleaning up some of the mud left behind, and we will be there shortly mining,” he said.
Richardson added that they would continue pumping down to the 11th level and install the permanent pumps before evacuating water from the rest of the mine.
According to Richardson, the water from the mine is being pumped into Windhoek reservoirs.
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Kombat Mine has been flooded thrice in its 172 years – in 1925, 1988, and 2008.
The first time it flooded was in 1925 when the Otavi Minen und Eisenbahn Gesellschaft (OMEG) was running the mine.
The company suspended operations until the 1950s when Tsumeb Consolidated Limited (TCL) TCL bought the mine.
The third flooding happened about nine years later, in 2007, when Weatherly International, through its subsidiary Ongopolo Mining, was operating the mine. The mine closed in 2008.
It took 14 years to get the mine back into operation; this time, it was the Canadian company Trigon Metals.
