Modern Mining July 2019

GOLD

View of the Ity CIL project. The ramp-up of the new plant to full nameplate capacity of 4 Mt/a took less than two months. New-look Ity gold mine performing strongly

TSX-listed Endeavour Mining has successfully transformed Ity, the oldest gold mine in Côte d’Ivoire, from a limited-life 950 kt/a heap leach operation to a much larger (4 Mt/a initially), long-life CIL operation. Mining and stacking activities for the heap leach operation ceased in mid- December 2018 while the CIL project began processing ore in February this year, achieving its first gold pour in March and commercial production at full nameplate capacity in early April. The new CIL plant is currently performing well with all key targets being met.

efficiency by Endeavour with approximately 90 % of the construction being handled in- house and with the first gold pour being achieved four months ahead of schedule. Not a single Lost-Time Injury (LTI) occurred over the 8,5 million man-hours worked during con- struction. More than 1 700 workers were in- volved in the construction, with over 95 % of them being Ivorian. The CIL project will produce 235 koz/a on average over its first five years of life and plus 200 koz/a over its first ten years. Over the cur- rently anticipated mine life of 14 years, the average annual production will be 173 koz/a. The AISC of production over the Life of Mine (LoM) is estimated at US$580/oz with this remarkably competitive figure being even lower (US$494/oz) in the first five years. The gold mineralisation at Ity was discov- ered in the 1950s but it was not until the early 1990s that a commercial mine was established at the site, the developers and owners of the operation being France’s BRGM and the Côte

W ith Ity expected to pro- duce between 160 koz and 200 koz in 2019 at an All- in Sustaining Cost (AISC) of US$525-590/oz, it will rank alongside the new Houndé mine in Burkina Faso as one of Endeavour’s two flagship op- erations. Like Houndé, which was commis- sioned in Q4‑2017, it was built with speed and

22  MODERN MINING  July 2019