Modern Mining January 2020

GOLD

A view of the Yaouré site taken several months ago. As can be seen, it lies close to the southern shore of man-made Lake Kossou.

this will strengthen as development progresses and greater benefits flow to the local population. The suc- cessful model for community engagement employed at Sissingué will be implemented at Yaouré. Perseus notes that 0,5 % of future revenue from the mine will be paid to a Community Development Fund (CDF) which consists of government and community representatives. Perseus believes there is plenty of scope for the existing mine life of Yaouré to be extended given the company has a highly prospective 360 km 2 land package in the area. In addition, the company announced in November 2018 that a preliminary inferred mineral resource had been estimated for a potential underground mining operation to supple- ment the CMA open pit. A scoping study on the underground resource – which totals 3,0 Mt at a grade of 6,2 g/t gold for 595 000 ounces of gold – has indicated that it appears amenable to extraction using mechanised underground room-and-pillar mining methods. Underground access from the CMA pit combined with the selected mining method will significantly reduce the capital development requirements should underground mining go ahead in the future. In its latest quarterly report

package. Offsite fabrication of critical steel work including the SAG and ball mills was well advanced and on schedule for completion and delivery to site in the March 2020 quarter. Full scale construction of the processing facili- ties and associated infrastructure began in October 2019 and, since then, encouraging progress has been made on a number of fronts, with work on the processing plant well advanced, 65 ha of the tail- ings storage facility (TSF) cleared, construction of the main substation progressing to plan (with trans- formers due on site shortly), and construction of the permanent camp and buildings progressing well with camp construction scheduled to be completed in the current quarter. According to Perseus, at the end of the quar- ter works required to enable the first gold pour by the stretch target date of late December 2020 were generally on schedule. By 31 December 2019, US$165,5 million or 62 % of the budgeted project cost of US$265 million had been committed, and US$99,3 million or 37 % of the budgeted capital cost paid in cash to suppliers of goods and services. Photos courtesy of Perseus Mining

Perseus board members meeting local village chiefs in May 2019.

(for the December 2019 quar- ter), Perseus says that onsite and offsite activities continued to schedule and on budget during the three-month period. By the end of the quarter, planned plant engineering was 99 % complete and procurement work (including delivery to site) was on schedule at 63 % complete. Ninety-eight of the planned 101 contract packages had been awarded and tenders were under con- sideration for a further contract

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