Gryphon tips underground potential in Burkina Faso

PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Gold hopeful Gryphon Minerals on Monday unveiled the potential for an underground operation at its Banfora project, in Burkina Faso.

The company reported that recent study work had demonstrated the potential for a future high-grade underground mining operation in addition to the proposed surface heap leach and carbon-in-leach (CIL) mine operations.

A Joint Ore Reserves Committee-compliant exploration target of 3.5-million to 4.5-million tonnes, grading between 5 g/t and 7 g/t for between 560 000 oz and one-million ounces had been defined below the current Nogbele North openpit.

The potential underground material would supplement openpit ore to the proposed add-on CIL processing facility.

“The high-grade gold mineralisation at the proposed Nogbele North openpit will provide significant early cash flow in the start-up phase of the current mine plan,” said Gryphon MD Steve Parsons.

“The potential continuation of this high-grade mineralisation below the openpit is an exciting target for us to drill test as it could add further high-grade gold production through an additional underground mining operation while using any existing CIL plant and infrastructure.”

Parsons said that Gryphon was also evaluating a number of other high-priority targets that could add further resources and reserves to the current mine plan at Banfora.

Gryphon was considering the development of a two-million-tonne-a-year heap leach start-up operation, as well as the upside potential for expansion by adding a conventional one-million-tonne-a-year CIL processing plant.

Gold production during the initial heap leach operations would average about 63 300 oz for the first two years, while access to near-surface higher-grade transitional material could increase production to an average of 78 600 oz/y.

With the addition of the CIL plant, Banfora’s mine life was expected to decrease from the 9.2 years estimated in the original scoping study, to seven years.