Endeavour Mining discover more gold in Burkina Faso
Endeavour Mining has announced that measured and indicated resources at its Houndé mine in Burkina Faso have increased by 554,000 ounces to 4.5 million ounces following further resource delineation at the Kari Area.
Endeavour Mining is a multi-asset gold producer focused on West Africa, with two mines (Ity and Agbaou) in Côte d’Ivoire, four mines (Houndé, Mana, Karma and Boungou) in Burkina Faso, four potential development projects (Fetekro, Kalana, Bantou and Nabanga) and a strong portfolio of exploration assets on the highly prospective Birimian Greenstone Belt across Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali and Guinea.
“We are very excited to announce this resource update as it continues to demonstrate the Houndé mine’s potential. Over 2.5Moz of Indicated resources have now been discovered in the Kari Area, ranking it as the largest resource in the Houndé mine complex,” Sébastien de Montessus, CEO, commented.
“Our ability in moving the Kari Area from discovery to production in under three years underscores the success of aggressive exploration strategy and the value of our strong and established government partnerships in West Africa.”
“Last year, the 1.0Moz Indicated resource delineated at Kari Pump led to a reserve conversion of over 700koz. We now look forward to quickly completing the work to convert the additional 1.5Moz of Indicated resources delineated for the other deposits. With 84% of the Kari Area resource grading above 2 g/t Au, we are confident we will achieve our goal of producing 250koz/year over a 10+ year mine life at Houndé by displacing lower grade material.”
The Kari Area includes a large area of anomalous drill intercepts covering an area 5km by 4km wide and which is host to numerous deposits located 7 to 10km northwest of the Houndé processing plant.
The company is very pleased with the additional resources delineated at the Kari Area for a number of reasons.
Firstly, the very favourable mineralization characteristics. A large portion of the resources is high grade, specifically those at Kari West. A large portion is also oxide and transitional material, while the Vindaloo deposit being mined currently is mainly fresh ore. These deposits are also amenable to open pit mining with potential strip ratios significantly lower than that currently being seen at the Vindaloo deposit and more than half of those at the high grade Kari Pump deposit.
Lastly, the attractive metallurgy provides for potential gold recovery rates above 90%.
The Kari Area has been the focus of extensive exploration since 2017, with over 400,000 meters drilled and six discoveries made: Kari Pump, Kari Center, Kari West, Kari Gap, Kari Pump NE and Kari South.
At Kari West, the weathered bedrock and saprolite thickness varies between 25 meters and 75 meters with thicker zones noted to the south. Laterite up to 20 meters thick covers most of the area.
The Kari West deposit is located in the hanging wall of a N240 trending and steep northwest-dipping lithological contact zone between dominantly meta-volcanic units (hanging wall) and a dominant metasedimentary unit (footwall). The deposit was formed under purely brittle conditions.
Endeavour Mining is a multi-asset gold producer focused on West Africa, with two mines (Ity and Agbaou) in Côte d’Ivoire, four mines (Houndé, Mana, Karma and Boungou) in Burkina Faso, four potential development projects (Fetekro, Kalana, Bantou and Nabanga) and a strong portfolio of exploration assets on the highly prospective Birimian Greenstone Belt across Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali and Guinea.
