Osino Resources says construction of its Twin Hills gold mine is progressing on schedule, with 1,500 people working on site each day as the company targets first gold production by this time next year while expanding employment, community investment and regional economic development.
Speaking during a panel discussion at the Namibia Mining Expo and Conference on Wednesday, Osino Resources country director Venna (Werner) Schuchmann said the company had moved into full-scale construction in June last year and was making steady progress on what he described as a world-class mining project.
“We started constructing the mine in earnest last year in June,” Schuchmann said, describing the construction site as “a playground for big boys with all the tools and machinery there.”
He said approximately 1,500 people are working on the project every day, with more than 60 contractors, as construction continues on the US$500 million development.
Schuchmann said the project is backed by Osino’s majority shareholder, China’s Shanjin International Gold, whose financial capacity and technical expertise have strengthened confidence in delivering the mine on schedule.
“We are really moving along and hopefully by this time next year we’ll have poured the first gold,” he said.
Once operational, Twin Hills is expected to employ at least 1,000 people directly, while generating significantly more indirect employment through suppliers, contractors and businesses across the Erongo Region.
Schuchmann said the mine’s economic impact would extend well beyond the operation itself.
“The multiplier effect, which we always talk about at the Chamber of Mines, job creation multiplied five or six times, the whole impact on Omaruru, Karibib and Usakos,” he said.
Beyond mining, Osino is investing in long-term community development programmes.
Schuchmann said the company is constructing a community centre in Karibib and supports 31 early childhood development centres in the surrounding area through a partnership with the Tobias Hainyeko Foundation, providing daily meals to about 1,000 children.
He added that the company’s Toro Trust will build 100 houses over the coming year for employees, benefiting surrounding communities.
“There are lots of little things which we’re very proud of,” he said.
Despite the progress, Schuchmann said regulatory delays remain one of the biggest challenges facing major mining investments in Namibia.
He said the pace at which regulators and public institutions make decisions can be frustrating, particularly during construction, when project schedules are tightly managed.
“The normal issues you have with dealing with the regulators, the public entities, is the speed of decisions,” he said. “In the end it always goes well, but the speed of execution is sometimes frustrating.”
Schuchmann urged Parliament to expedite the long-awaited Minerals Bill, saying the legislation would provide greater certainty for investors.
He also highlighted ongoing challenges with obtaining and renewing work visas for specialised foreign personnel required during construction.
According to Schuchmann, companies are often forced to repeat lengthy recruitment processes when renewing permits for experts who have already been working on projects for years.
“It’s really sometimes very frustrating for us to bring in, especially for a construction project, people from other countries,” he said. “We’ve actually now got the thing that some people have been here for two years. The visas need to be renewed and we need to go through the whole process of interviewing again, which just doesn’t make sense.”
He warned that delays in processing visas and permits can have direct financial consequences by disrupting commissioning schedules and delaying delivery of equipment and technical expertise needed to keep construction on track.
“In a construction project we’ve got a certain window to execute things without impacting the critical path,” Schuchmann said. “We need to make sure that our product gets to the market when we say it is going to.”
Looking ahead, Schuchmann said Namibia possesses the resources, partnerships and goodwill needed to unlock even greater mining-led growth.
“We are just too few to be poor,” he said, echoing President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah’s message delivered earlier in the day. “We’ve got the resources, we’ve got the people, we’ve got everything there. If there’s goodwill from both sides, we can really work together and we can move mountains.”
