Endeavour announces wet commissioning at sabodala-massawa Biox expansion
Dakar – Endeavour Mining has announced that wet commissioning activities are now underway at the Sabodala-Massawa Expansion project (“BIOX® Expansion”) in Senegal. The BIOX® Expansion project is on budget, with construction now 91% complete, and the first gold pour is expected on schedule, in May.
Ian Cockerill, CEO, commented: “We are extremely pleased with our progress as we start wet commissioning at the BIOX® Expansion project. Importantly, we have achieved this milestone with no lost-time injuries having worked more than 3 million man hours, which is a testament to the strong safety culture that is a hallmark of our in-house construction teams.
At completion, Sabodala-Massawa will become a true top tier asset with 2024 production of up to 400koz at an industry leading AISC of less than $850/oz, with costs expected to improve further in the coming years, embedding the mine firmly in the lowest cost quartile.
This year, Endeavour is well positioned to transition from a phase of investment in organic growth, to a more cash flow generative phase in the second half of the year. This inflection point will allow us to focus our efforts on increasing our shareholder returns while de-levering our balance sheet, as we continue to execute on our strategy.”
Wet commissioning of the BIOX® Expansion was delivered in less than 23 months after construction was launched in April 2022. During construction activities, up to 1,300 employees and contractors were on site, 82% of whom were Senegalese nationals, successfully completing over three million man-hours with zero lost time injuries.
The addition of the 1.2Mtpa BIOX® Expansion, with an initial capital cost of $290 million, is expected to add 194koz per annum of incremental production over the first five years, lifting Sabodala-Massawa to top-tier status with expected production of 360-400koz at an AISC of between $750-850/oz in FY-2024, increasing to above 400koz from 2025.
The Sabodala-Massawa mine was acquired by Endeavour in February 2021, as part of its acquisition of Teranga. Endeavour owns a 90% stake in the Sabodala-Massawa mine, with the remaining 10% owned by the Government of Senegal.
Located approximately 630 km east-southeast of Dakar, the capital of Senegal, the Sabodala-Massawa mine consists of several open pit operations on the highly prospective Birimian Greenstone Belt. Non-refractory ore is treated at a 4.0Mtpa CIL plant that achieved commercial production in November 2009. In 2021, Endeavour expedited the completion of the initial upgrades at the existing CIL plant and simultaneously advanced the definitive feasibility study for the addition of a refractory ore processing plant to confirm the economic viability of processing the high-grade refractory ores from the Massawa Central Zone and Massawa North Zone deposits. In 2022, Endeavour launched the construction of the 1.2Mtpa BIOX® circuit to process the large refractory ore resource with first gold expected in early May 2024. As at 31 December 2022, Proven and Probable reserves totalled 62.8Mt at 2.02 g/t containing 4.1Moz of gold and Measured and Indicated resources (inclusive of reserves) totalled 106.1Mt at 1.86 g/t containing 6.3Moz of gold. For the full year ended 31 December 2023, Sabodala-Massawa produced 294koz at an AISC of $767/oz. For FY-2024, Sabodala-Massawa is expected to produce between 360-400koz at an AISC of between $750-850/oz.
Sabodala-Massawa is Endeavour’s largest exploration focus this year with a guided spend of $21 million, or 31% of total Group exploration expenditure for the year. The exploration programme is focussed on expanding non-refractory and refractory resources for the existing CIL processing plant and the new BIOX® Expansion respectively. The exploration programme remains on track to achieve its 5-year target of discovering an additional 2.3-2.7Moz of Indicated resources by the end of 2025.
