PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Junior gold developer Bassari Resources has unveiled a mining start-up plan for its Makabingui project, in Senegal, to take advantage of the high gold price.
The ASX-listed company said that the new mine plan had been developed as a full-scale mining and production start-up was not possible at this stage, given the restrictions arising from the Covid-19 pandemic, which has curtailed travel to Senegal while also delaying the shipment of vital equipment.
The new mining plan would see in-country staff produce around 2 000 oz of gold over a 12-week period, using Bassari equipment.
Bassari told shareholders on Friday that the goal was to start mining at an area within the Makabingui exploitation permit, where a location in the pit 2 area with reduced strip ratio, had been identified. The grade within the location has been nominally specified, and some 2 200 oz is expected to be recovered.
An initial target of 70 000 t, building up to 140 000 t of ore and waste material will be mined over a three-month period, containing some 40 000 t of ore. The waste material will be used for the mining infrastructure works, and the extracted ore will be stockpiled onto the newly constructed run-of-mine pad, pending final crushing for transport to the tertiary crushers and for final processing.