Blanket

Location:
Blanket mine is a village and mine that is located 15 kilometers north-west of Gwanda in the Matabeleland South Province of Zimbabwe. Gwanda, the provincial capital of Matabeleland South is approximately 150 km south east of Bulawayo the country’s second largest city and 196 km northwest of the Beit Bridge Border post with South Africa, and 560 km from Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital city. Access to the mine is by an all-weather tarred road from Gwanda, which is linked from Beit Bridge to Bulawayo and Harare by a national highway.

Background:
The mine was established in 1904 at the north-west end of the Gwanda Greenstone Belt. Gold had previously been mined on an artisanal basis but was industrialised by the Matabele Reefs and Estate Company, which operated the mine until 1911 when it was sold to Forbes Rhodesia Syndicate. It apparently ceased operations after 1916, but resumed in 1941 under a new owner, F.D.A. Payne. The Canadian mine company Falconbridge Ltd. took it over in 1964 and ran it until 1993, producing over 500,000 ounces of gold from 4 million tons of ore. It was sold to Kinross Gold, which produced another 400,000 ounces of gold from 2.4 million tons over the following 12 years.

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