As I said in my ANALYSIS, Caledonia Mining is a remarkable tough company with excellent management to weather the African corruption storm and the gold suppression scam by the world central banks that went on for many years. The company now will take off on the rest of it's mineral assets in Africa and develop them with the same tenacity as the Blanket Mine. Read the below current news release. Buy while you can at this cheap price because it will be only a foot note in history on the great run up in price of the junior mining companies like Caledonia. This will be a long term hold for probably at least 3 years to squeeze the best profit out and maybe as long as 5 years. Buy it and retire with the money you make on it.
24th January 2011
JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – TSX- and Aim-listed Caledonia Mining has substantially increased the production at its Blanket mine in Zimbabwe, with the gold operation achieving 99% of the targeted 40 000-oz/y production capacity by the end of 2010.
Production reached an annualised rate of 39 670 oz of gold in the last two weeks of December, which Caledonia said was determined after taking into consideration a public holiday on Christmas Day and downtime resulting from power interruptions during this period.
The mine started the ramp-up to the targeted 40 000 oz/y after the successful commissioning of the No 4 Shaft expansion project at the end of September.
Caledonia said that the level of production achieved at the end of December showed that the key aspects of the expansion project, including the underground crushing station, the automated skip loading system and the increased milling capacity, were operating within their design capacity.
Reporting on the installation of stand-by generators at Blanket, the Toronto-based miner said that it had experienced unexpected delays with the delivery of the 33-kV electrical switchgear, which was required for the installation and commissioning of the four generating sets.
However, it was anticipated that the entire 10-MW generating system would be operational by the end of March 2011, at which point Blanket would be able to maintain all mining, hauling and milling operations during interruptions to the electricity supply.
The company reported that electricity supply had been more stable after Blanket had entered into a new supply agreement with the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority.
“While Caledonia welcomes the improvement in electricity supply, it still believes it is prudent to proceed with the plans to equip Blanket with full stand-by generating capacity to safeguard production against any future power interruptions,” the company stated.
Caledonia added that it would continue to tackle the historic underinvestment in mine development, equipment and machinery at the mine.
However, underground development work, together with reinvestment in equipment and machinery, was expected to have a temporary impact on production in the first quarter of 2011, but the mine was still expected to produce 40 000 oz of gold in 2011.
