Modern Mining January 2018

MINING News

Boungou mine development 75 % complete

SEMAFO Inc, listed on the TSX, is continuing to make good prog- ress on its new US$231 million Boungou mine in south-eastern Burkina Faso and announced on 20 December that the project was 75 % complete and remained on budget for commissioning in the third quarter of 2018. As at November 30, 2017, over 90 % of the total concrete required had been poured and some 60 % of the structural steel and 30%of themechanical instal- lation completed. Installation of the SAG mill was well advanced and the tailings storage facility was 60 % complete. Pre-stripping was continuing at the Boungou deposit with 8,3 million of the

will be 20 m-wide at a 10 % gradient. The open-pit reserve totals 9,6 Mt grading 4,14 g/t gold. A five-year mining contract has been signed with AMS, which will ulti- mately deploy a fleet that will include two Komatsu PC1250 excavators, two Komatsu PC2000 face shovels, and 13 Komatsu HD605 haul trucks. The ore will be treated in a 4 000 tonnes per day (t/d) CIP plant. Boungou will have a mine life of plus seven years and will produce an average of plus 226 000 oz of gold annually during The Boungou processing plant under construction (photo: SEMAFO).

projected 18 million tonnes extracted. Approximately 1 832 personnel including contractors were employed on site and 3,3 million man-hours had been worked without a lost-time injury. The EPCM contractor for the project is Lycopodium and the mining contractor African Mining Services (AMS), a subsidiary of Ausdrill Limited. The Boungou deposit will mined from three distinct pits with mining taking place on 6 m benches. Haulage ramps

its first three years of production at a low AISC of US$374/oz. The payback period is estimated at 1,5 years. Boungouwill be SEMAFO’s secondmine in Burkina Faso. Its first, Mana, is located 260 km south-west of Ouagadougou and is reportedly the third largest mine in the country. It has produced some 1,6 Moz since its first gold pour in 2008. The gold plant has been expanded four times since commissioning to a current capacity of over 7 200 t/d.  mented: “2017 was a year of delivery for Rainbow which saw us hit all of our targets on budget and on schedule to become a high-grade concentrate producer at the only producing rare earths mine in Africa. 2018 is set to be a year of growth with commercial production and sales now underway. “With the forecast demand in elec- tric vehicles driving the growth for REEs and a strong cash balance following an over-subscribed institutional fundraising in December, we are in an excellent posi- tion to accelerate development at Gakara. As such we are now commencing a drill programme to include the four exciting anomalies we identified in Q4 2017 and with a view to potentially delivering a maiden JORC resource in the second half of 2018 and reaching our new production tar- get of 6 000 t/a during 2019. I look forward to reporting on our exploration programme as we continue to ramp up production at Gakara over the course of 2018.” 

Drill programme kicks off at Gakara project London-listed Rainbow, the high-grade rare earth producer, reports the commence- ment of a drilling programme at its Gakara project in Burundi with the objective of supporting the mine plan for the currently productive areas of the licence and explor- ing the significant geological anomalies identified in 2017.

tially 22 m thick and 80 m x 100 m in size was discovered by a ground gravity survey last year. Should these drill results prove posi- tive, a second phase of drilling will take place during Q2 and Q3 2018, with the aim of producing a JORC-compliant resource statement in H2 2018. Following the announcement of the first shipment of concentrate on 5 December 2017, a further two shipments have now taken place. Production ramp-up has been proceeding according to plan, with the tar- get of hitting a run rate of 5 000 t/a by the end of 2018. In addition, work has begun to procure the capital equipment needed to increase production more rapidly, following the suc- cessful fundraising concluded in December 2017. Martin Eales, CEO of Rainbow, com-

Gakara is one of the highest grade rare earth element mining projects globally, with an estimated in situ grade of 47-67 % Total Rare Earth Oxide (TREO). Drilling contractors have been engaged and the first phase of the drilling pro- gramme will continue through Q1 2018. It will focus on improving the understanding of the current production area at Gasagwe as well as exploring the geophysical anom- alies identified by the airborne survey completed in November 2017, plus Kiyenzi, where a large sill-like oval structure poten-

January 2018  MODERN MINING  15