Modern Mining October 2019

As can be seen here, the Yaouré site lies close to the southern shore of man-made Lake Kossou. The Kossou hydroelectric power station is situated 6 km east of the project.

Yaouré project well into the development phase West African gold producer Perseus Mining, listed on the ASX and TSX, is moving fast on construction of its new Yaouré gold mine in central Côte d’Ivoire. The company formally committed to developing the mine in May this year and has since made impressive progress. The mine will be the third in Perseus’s portfolio and will transform the com- pany into a 500 000 ounce per year gold producer by 2022.

P erseus reported in September that the construc- tion camp at the Yaouré site was complete and that the earthworks contracts had been awarded with most earthmoving equipment already on site. In a presentation on the project, it said clearing of the permanent camp and Tailings Storage Facility (TSF) sites was underway while the plant site was 100 % cleared with the Process Plant Management Team (PPMT) establishing on site. The power line sur- vey was complete, the transformer and sub-station contracts let and the line construction tender issued. Ball and SAG mill fabrication was also well advanced. The project is being undertaken by the same teams (Perseus’s own in-house team and Lycopodium) that delivered Perseus’s second mine, Sissingué in northern Côte d’Ivoire, ahead of time and on budget. Under the terms of Lycopodium’s contract, first gold is due to be poured at Yaouré by 23 January 2021, although a ‘stretch target’ involv- ing an earlier gold pour in December 2020 is being

pursued and is currently thought to be achievable. Yaouré, which was acquired by Perseus in 2016 as part of its acquisition of Amara Mining, lies within the eastern half of the informally named Bouflé greenstone belt. It is located in a rural area on the southern edge of Lake Kossou, 260 km north-west of Abidjan. The Kossou hydroelectric power station is 6 km east of the project. A DFS was completed on Yaouré in November 2017 that detailed a US$265 million development producing 215 koz/a of gold at an AISC of US$759/ oz over the first five years of operation. Life of mine production will be 1,4 Moz at an AISC of US$759/oz over 8,5 years. As detailed in the DFS, ore will be sourced from two open pits, CMA and Yaouré, and historical heap leach stockpiles. Mining will be by conventional open-pit mining methods utilising hydraulic exca- vators and trucks. In ore, mining bench heights will be 5 m with 2,5 m flitches to minimise ore loss and

20  MODERN MINING  October 2019