SGS is pleased to announce the expansion of our commercial geochemistry laboratory in Bamako, Mali. The Bamako facility is strategically located to service the growing regional demand for geochemical testing from the West African gold exploration and mining industry. With the addition of over 14,600 ft2 (over 1,360 m2) of laboratory space, and the installation of a full fire assay and wet laboratory facility, the laboratory will provide services for gold, including:
• Fire assay
• Flame atomic absorption
• Gravimetric measurement

This facility will also offer services to support environmental sustainability to the exploration and mining industry. This expansion will ensure better turnaround for local clients. The new laboratory will be fully operational and ready to accept samples in February 2013, with a grand opening to be held in early April 2013. The SGS facility in Bamako provides high volume sample preparation gold analysis and feeds analytical work for elements other than gold into SGS’ full service laboratory in Johannesburg, South Africa. The facility will provide analytical capacity of >130,000 samples per month, with capacity to process prepared samples from any of the ten mobile (MSPU) and fixed sample preparation units in the region. The Bamako laboratory is a commercial facility that complements our unmatched on-site laboratory network in Africa (Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Eritrea, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Republic of Congo, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Tanzania).

Our extensive African capabilities enhance our unparalleled global network of over 150 commercial, on-site and mobile laboratories, 12 metallurgical facilities and 5 mineralogy facilities. Of these sites, 5 labs are fully integrated GEMM (geochemistry, environmental, metallurgy, mineralogy) labs (located in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile and South Africa) and 3 provide integrated geochemistry-metallurgy services (Mexico, Peru and Russia). Around the world, SGS offers a wide range of services to the minerals sector including geochemical analysis, resource calculation, mineralogy, metallurgy, advanced systems, water treatment and trade services.