JEDDAH, 7 September 2003 — Exceeding all expectations, the Ma’aded mine at Madain Dahb is planning to keep extracting gold at a profit through 2004. Started 16 years ago, the mine had a life expectancy of 10 years. However, the quality of the vein and the upward move in gold price after a slump the last few years, together with the profitable extraction of metals other than gold from the same site, has extended the working life of the mine.
The veins of gold lie under the small, steeply sided hill that marks the modest entrance to the mine. Through this has passed every scrap of metal ore.
The tunnels, about three meters wide, which give access to the veins that honeycomb the rock extend for 38 kilometers underground. Currently spread over five levels, each with 50 meters of vertical distance between them, they provide access to the ore bearing rock.
“We have planned for 2004 already and are outlining the year 2005,” Abduljalil Awari, the maintenance supervisor for the mine, told Arab News yesterday. “We are extending the shafts over the next year and expect to cut level six at 300 meters this year. With this unexpected run of productive life, we tend now to plan on a-year-at-a-time basis.”
“We expected an output of one million tons over the ten years,” he added. “Over the 16 years, we have extracted two million.”
Mine output varies between 10 grams/ton and 32 grams/ton. Even after 16 years, the average is running at 30 percent above the cut-off point for profitability, based on gold output alone.
“The other metals — mainly zinc and copper — keep us very viable,” said Awari.
Extraction of the gold ore after crushing and ball-milling is by the flotation process, where finely milled rock and metals are floated on a series of heavy liquids and skimmed from the surface. The toxic and environmentally damaging mercury-extraction process has never been used.
The mine stays in profit helped by human resource factors as well as market prices and the gold vein.
“There has been evidence of mining here for over a thousand years,” said Awari. “There is an active legend that it was the mine that became known as King Sulemain’s (Solomon’s) Mine. When we set up the modern plant, we had a supply of people who had knowledge of mining, the risks involved and were keen to work with us.”
Mine and local community work in a comfortable symbiosis. Not all the local labor works at the mine, but few families are unconnected with it. The presence of the mine has transformed a remote desert village into a developing small town with facilities that seemed, in 1987, impossibly remote.
“We spent an average of SR3 million a month in the town of Madain Dahb and this helps build the community and maintain our human resources,” said Awari. “The mine invested in the area and attracted labor, began to build the infrastructure and then the government assisted us with backup and resources outside the commercial area.”
The local town now boasts schools, hospital, modern offices and a thriving community.
“It has attracted non-mine based business to the area,” said Awari. “And this has to be good. Eventually the reef will run out and we hope that the community will have the commercial and light industrial base to continue.”
There have been demographic and cultural changes in Madain Dahb brought about by the influence of the mine. Previously there was a drift of people away as younger members sought employment elsewhere. Awari says that since the growth of business opportunity in the community, there is a greatly increased inflow of money and people — additional to the mine — as those same people and their families build holiday properties and begin to invest in their home community.
“There has been a sea-change in the attitudes of the local community,” said Awari. “Originally very traditional, they now combine a ready interest in business development and accept new ideas at the same time as the important and valuable areas of their culture.”
The mine management foresaw the dangers of the total reliance of a community on the mine as the sole source of income. It works while the mine can employ all the available labor and maintain the local community and the local micro-economy. However, that ceases when the gold runs out. Western America has numerous examples of “ghost towns,” once dependent on a local mine, now devoid of people and prospects. Europe experienced much the same effect with the decline of coal mining. To counteract this effect, a plan has been made to build a labor pool with modern skills that can supply the mine with staff or, as they are transferable skills, contribute to the national economy elsewhere.
Investment has been encouraged with the development of the already existing agricultural industry with a view of efficiently supplying Madinah. Even e-commerce is under scrutiny, because work on the Internet is unaffected by the relative isolation of the community.
When eventually the mine closes, the town should have a commercial and industrial base and the educated workforce to run it. “We have had a good relationship with the people here and really hope to leave a better place,” said Awari.
