Name: Sukari mine.

Location: The Sukari gold deposit is located in the Eastern Desert of Egypt.

Mine Owner/s: Pharaoh Gold Mines, the Egyptian holding company for Centamin’s Sukari mine.

Brief Description: Sukari is a low-cost, bulk tonnage openpit and a high-grade underground operation with significant exploration upside at depth and regionally within the 160 km² tenement.

Brief History: Gold was mined at Sukari in Pharaonic and Roman times, with an estimated 1 000 kg of gold produced. Small-scale mining was re-established from 1912 to 1914. More substantial operations were undertaken from 1937 to 1951, with recorded production of 4 768 kg of gold from underground workings.

Pharaoh Gold Mines negotiated a concession agreement in 1994 to explore for gold and associated minerals. In November 2000, Pharaoh Gold Mines submitted a feasibility study for the Sukari gold project, in accordance with the terms of the concession agreement. This was accepted, and in May 2005 an exploitation lease covering 160 km2, containing the proposed Sukari mine site and surrounding prospects, was officially granted.

Primary Metals/Minerals: Gold.

Secondary Metals/Minerals: None stated.

Geology/Mineralisation: The Sukari felsic porphyry outcrop is located in an easterly dipping sequence of andesite flows, serpentinites and associated volcanoclastic sediments, mainly tuffs and epiclastics. It strikes for 2.3 km and is 100 m to 600 m thick. It forms a jagged-toothed, strong topographic high, up to 250 m above wadi level (390 m above sea level). Wadi drainage plains pass to the east and west of the outcrop, and the sharply incised green-brown Red Sea Hills surround that. The area is arid and almost bare of vegetation.

The host to gold mineralisation is the Sukari felsic porphyry unit that contains a variable series of subunits ranging from minor acid and felsic rhyolite and dacite to coarser grained feldspar and quartz porphyries, quartz diorites and granodiorites, dipping from moderate east in the south, through subvertical to slightly overturned hangingwall contact in the north. The porphyry units are envisaged to have formed during a more acid event in an overall intermediate environment in which some rhyolite–dacite flows were later intruded by high-level porphyry as a multiple event.

Reserves: The project has total proven and probable reserves of 188.4-million tonnes grading 1.1 g/t gold.

Resources: Total measured and indicated resources as at 2019 were estimated at 321-million tonnes grading 1.01 g/t gold. Inferred mineral resources are estimated at 12-million tonnes grading 1.49 g/t gold.

Mining Method: Openpit and underground.

Major Infrastructure and Equipment: The mine’s process plant has been built and operated over several staged iterations to a capacity of ten-million tonnes a year.

A dump-leach facility is operated in parallel with the process plant for the treatment of low-grade oxide ore.

Power is generated by two power station facilities and is distributed to area substations.

The mine further includes a fuel storage facility, on-site buildings for administration offices, a first aid clinic and security, on-site buildings for the process plant, mine facilities, fire protection systems, low- and high-security fences, a communications network and an accommodation village.

Prospects: Centamin is working on identifying potential opportunities for improvements across the Sukari operations over the long-term.

Contact Details:
Centamin
Tel +20 035 41 1259
Email pgm@centamin.com
Website https://www.centamin.com