Name and Location
North Kao gold project, Burkina Faso.

Client
True Gold.

Project Description
The North Kao project will generate an additional $118-million in after-tax free cash flow for True Gold’s Karma gold project.

The preliminary economic assessment (PEA) supports a heap-leach mine scenario from the defined North Kao openpit deposit containing 312 000 oz of inferred mineral resources.

The centralised heap-leach pad remaining from the feasibility mine plan has the capacity to process oxide and transition mineralisation from the North Kao deposit, which will be delivered overland by haulage truck.

The PEA envisages that about 43.2-million tonnes of total material will be mined from the North Kao openpit over the course of the project’s estimated 2.5-year mine life. This will deliver an estimated 9.9-million tonnes of feed to the process facility and 33.3-million tonnes of waste to the nearby storage facility.

The overall strip ratio for the project is 3.4:1, with mining being conducted 350 days a year by an owner-operated fleet at average material movement of 41 000 t/d.

The mining operation will employ conventional truck and shovel methods. Two 300 t hydraulic excavators, configured in backhoe mode will load a fleet of ten 90 t trucks for the transport of mineralisation and waste to the primary crusher and respective near-pit waste dumps.

Four additional 90 t trucks will deliver mineralisation directly from the pit to the process facilities without the need for mineralisation rehandling.

The material to be excavated has a bulk density of 1.77 t/m3 for oxide and 1.95t/m3 for transition, with respective work indices of 6 to 8 kWh/t and 10 kWh/t, proving the soft, porous nature of this saprolitic material.

As a result, the soft nature of the openpit mineralisation and waste material allows for 98% of the total material to be excavated without blasting.

A small portion of the transition material will be drilled and blasted at low powder factors.

The North Kao process design is based on the use of conventional heap-leach technology, with a production capacity of four-million tonnes a year. Mined mineralisation will be crushed, agglomerated and conveyed to the leach pad, where it will be stacked in a 10 m lift and irrigated with dilute cyanide solution.

Gold dissolved by the cyanide will be adsorbed onto activated carbon in a carbon-in-column circuit.

The loaded carbon is then stripped of the gold using Zadra-type elution.

The resulting product will be subjected to electrowinning and smelting to produce doré on site.

Net Present Value/Internal Rate of Return
The project has an after-tax net present value at 5% discount of $69.6-million and an internal rate of return of 213%, with a payback of 4.7 months.

Value
The project requires capital of $17.7-million, including contingency, to support the preparation of the mine and associated facilities with a process capacity of four-million tonnes a year.

Duration
The proposed development schedule allows for 12 months of preproduction development, which includes community relocation, mining prestrip, and interlift heap-leach pad liner installation. Assuming work starts at the end of the Karma definitive feasibility study (DFS) plan in 2022, the first full year of gold production from North Kao is expected in 2024, year 9 of the DFS mine plan.

Latest Developments
The PEA has confirmed that North Kao can be economically viable.

While the PEA is based on slightly more than 300 000 oz of oxide and transition resources, True Gold’s exploration successes in recent discoveries demonstrates the potential to add additional openpit leachable material at the Karma project for potential mine-life extensions or potential incremental throughput expansions.

If the North Kao inferred resources are converted to a higher resource definition, the company will optimise the Karma feasibility study mine plan so that North Kao may be mined concurrently with the Kao deposit; however, there is no certainty that the resources will be converted to reserves.

Key Contracts and Suppliers
None stated.

On Budget and on Time?
Not stated.

Contact Details for Project Information
True Gold Mining investor enquiries, Blaine Monaghan, tel +1 604 801 5020 or email bmonaghan@truegoldmining.com.