Canadian miner Iamgold will have two new plants, both low-capital, short payback period projects, fully operational next month, recovering at least an additional 7 000 oz/y from its operations in Suriname and Burkina Faso.

At the Rosebel mine, in Suriname, the company has completed the construction of a new carbon-in-column plant, which will passively treat tailings decant water to recover residual gold that is present in the solution.

Situated between the two existing ponds at the tailings management facility, the $1.6-million plant will also be used for downstream leaching of tailings after it has left the process plant.

The plant is expected to recover at least 5 000 oz/y at a marginal operating cost of about $35/oz, to cover additional power and elution costs, Iamgold reports in a media statement dealing with its brownfields projects.

In Burkina Faso, Iamgold has started dry commissioning of its $5.8-million oxygen plant, which is also expected to be fully operational in January.

The plant will improve leaching kinetics in the Essakane carbon-in-leach circuit by injecting oxygen directly into the leach tanks, rather than the current practice of injecting air. This will increase overall gold recovery at Essakane by a minimum of 0.5 percentage points, the company reports.

The additional recovery will add at least 2 000 oz/y at a marginal operating cost of $175/oz to cover for incremental power requirements.

The plant will also realise an estimated 10% savings in cyanide consumption, or about $1.2-million a year.

Meanwhile, Iamgold has also started constructing the road that will link the Saramacca mine to the Rosebell mill. The company plans to start delivering ore to the mill in the second half of next year.

“In just over 28 months we have taken this project from a greenfield property with no defined resource to declaring, this past September, attributable reserves of one-million ounces, and now to commencing construction,” comments executive VP and COO Gord Stothart.