Modern Mining April 2018

MINING News

Boungou heads for completion

Tanga encouraged by Joumbira drilling

SEMAFO Inc, listed on the TSX, recently reported that construction of its Boungou gold mine in Burkina Faso was 87 % com- plete, with first gold scheduled to be poured early in the third quarter of 2018. In a first step towards this milestone, SEMAFO has begun commissioning activities on dry plant equipment. Over the coming weeks, as construction continues, the crushing and reclaim circuit equipment required for initial production will undergo testing. The power plant, which was over 90 % complete at the end of February, has been partially operational since early March. Development is on budget with US$182 million of the US$231 million capi- tal expenditure having been incurred by the end of February this year.

Completion of the gold room and plant services has been advanced from the third quarter to the second quarter. Pre-stripping at the mine site is 69 % complete with 12,5 Mt of the projected 18 Mt extracted and ore extraction will commence in the coming weeks. Some 1 818 personnel including con- tractors are employed on site, 85 % of whom are Burkinabe. The safety record is excellent with 4,5 million man-hours (454 days) having been worked without a lost- time injury. Located 320 km from the capital, Ougadougou, in the south-east of the country on SEMAFO’s Natougou property, Boungou will be a high-grade open-pit mine with the processing facility consist- ing of a 4 000 tonnes per day CIP plant. 

ASX-listed Tanga Resources has announced encouraging developments from diamond drilling at the Joumbira zinc project in Namibia, with semi-massive sulphides being intersected in the first diamond drill hole (JBDD001) of the initial drilling programme targeting shallow, high-grade, zinc-lead mineralisation. Drill hole JBDD001 was positioned as a twin hole to the historical hole J017, drilled by Messina Transvaal Development. Host stratigraphy (limestone and calc-silicate) was intersected between 56,5 m and 81,5 m, with substantial semi-massive sulphides intersected between 67,1 m and 71,0 m and 76,1 m and 77,82 m, with visually identified sphalerite (zinc) and galena (lead). These latest visual observations of drill core in which sphalerite and galena are the dominant sulphide minerals support the reported historical observations at Joumbira. No exploration has been com- pleted on either the immediate target area or surrounding area for over 16 years, and no modern exploration or assay methods have been applied, says Tanga. Joumbira is an advanced, high grade zinc-lead project located in the highly pro- spective and well-endowed Damaran Belt of Namibia. It is located in central Namibia, approximately 190 km by sealed road from the capital, Windhoek, and 400 km from the port of Walvis Bay. The project has excellent infrastructure with the major service town of Otjiwarongo located 50 km to the north. Tanga has an option to acquire Coldstone Investments, which has a joint venture agreement with Epangelo Mining Company, owned by the Namibian government, to earn in up to 80 % (with the ability to increase to 90 %) of Joumbira. 

View of the grinding circuit at Boungou (photo: SEMAFO).

April 2018  MODERN MINING  7