Amara Mining has declared a maiden reserve of 70.4 Mt at a grade of 1.18 g/t for 2.7 Moz for its Yaoure project, in Côte d’Ivoire. The company determined the reserve as part a pre-feasibility study, which it completed in Q2 2015, and it is based on a US$975/oz pit shell.
The reserves form part of a total Indicated resource of 106.3 Mt at a grade of 1.29 g/t for 4.4 Moz of gold contained. Inferred resources add 2.4 Moz.
As part of its work towards a bankable feasibility study, Amara intends to conduct a 12,000 m drilling programme to upgrade a portion of Inferred resources to Indicated (by Q4 2015). It will also work to improve the economics of the project through considering the selective mining of a higher grade zone and decreasing the upfront capital cost through reducing the size of the mining fleet and the size of the plant and removing the need for pre-stripping.
The pre-feasibility study considered an open pit feeding a 6.5 Mt/y plant at 1.18 g/t gold and a recovery of 90% to produce an average of 218 koz of gold for 11 years at a cash cost of US$739/oz and AISC of US$782/oz. The total pre-production capital cost was US$447 million.
As at 30 June 2015, Amara had cash of US$13.6 million to fund its feasibility study work.
Amara declares maiden reserve containing 2.7 Moz of gold at Yaoure: AMA