Modern Mining June 2015

MINING IN AFRICA

countries – notably Guinea, Senegal, Mauri­ tania, Niger and Liberia – have significant gold endowments and in most cases produc- ing mines. Of these countries, perhaps the one that is most exciting in terms of new devel- opments is Liberia, where Aureus Mining, listed in Toronto and on London’s AIM, is currently commissioning its US$172 million New Liberty gold mine. This is an open-pit mine with recovery via conventional gravity and CIL processing. DRA is the EPCM contrac- tor for the 1,1 Mt/a plant and related works while MonuRent has supplied and maintains the mining fleet (with mining remaining in the hands of Aureus). New Liberty, which will have an average annual production of 120 000 ounces of gold during the first six years of its eight-year mine life, is Liberia’s first modern gold mine. New Liberty – which has just poured its first gold – is certainly not the beginning and end of the Liberian gold story. Aureus Mining has an active exploration programme underway in the country and has been particularly encour- aged by the results it has been getting from its Ndablama project, 40 km north-east of New Liberty, while Hummingbird Resources holds the Dugbe 1 project, which it believes has the potential to be bigger than its Yanfolila project in Mali. When Modern Mining spoke to Humming­ bird’s MD, Dan Betts, earlier this year, he described Dugbe as a virgin discovery made by Hummingbird’s geologists and said it boasted a resource of just over 4 million ounces of gold at an average grade of 1,4 g/t. “This certainly ranks as Liberia’s biggest gold deposit and, in fact, is impressive by global standards,” he said. “We completed a PEA in 2013 which demonstrated the viability of a 20-year proj- ect producing up to 125 000 ounces a year in its early years and we’re now well advanced with our DFS – which is currently under

optimisation.” He added that the DFS was being prepared by a team of consultants led by South Africa’s MDM Engineering. While it seems unlikely that Liberia, a very small country by African standards in terms of area, will ever rival Ghana and Mali as a gold producer, it is certainly not impossible that it could get up to at least several hundred thousand ounces a year of production – and possibly more – within the next five years. The country is generally acknowledged as being under-explored so there are very real prospects of explorers making new discoveries. Whatever the case, the New Liberty mine will put the country on the map as a commercial (instead of just an artisanal) gold producer and also dem- onstrate that it is possible to run a modern gold mine in a country which until fairly recently was regarded as one of Africa’s failed states. 

The camp at Hummingbird’s Dugbe 1 project in Liberia. The project has a resource of just over 4 million ounces of gold (photo: Hummingbird Resources).

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June 2015  MODERN MINING  43