B2Gold breaks ground at new Mali gold mine

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Vancouver-based B2Gold on Wednesday broke ground at its Fekola mine site in Mali, where the company is building a 350 000-oz/y gold mine.

Mines Ministry Chief of Staff Robert Diarra officiated the event, which was attended by national and regional government representatives, as well as community leaders, B2Gold reported in a statement.

The company started initial construction in February 2015 and has already completed several early construction activities, including a new site access road and an on-site airstrip, among others.

B2Gold started mine construction activities in the fourth quarter. The company’s current construction focus was on building a permanent camp, starting excavation of the mill area and starting clearing of the tailings basin.

Concurrently with the activities on site, B2Gold’s engineering team was working with Lycopodium Engineering in Australia to complete detailed design and procure long-lead items. B2Gold reported that many of the major mill packages had been identified and purchase orders had been issued. This included semi-autogenous grinding and ball mills, thickeners, cyclones, crusher and tanks.

The Fekola mine is expected to start production in 2017. It will produce an average of 350 000 oz/y for the first seven years of production at an average operating cash cost of $418/oz. The life-of-mine plan is to produce about 276 000 oz/y at an average operating cash cost of $552/oz.

B2Gold estimates the total pre-production capital costs to be $395-million plus $67-million of anticipated mine fleet and power generator costs, which will be lease financed.
2Gold also owns mines in Nicaragua, the Philippines and in Namibia.  The company is projecting to produce between 500 000 oz and 540 000 oz of gold in 2015.