PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The Morila gold mine, in Mali, remained on track to produce between 10 000 oz and 10 500 oz of gold for the first quarter of 2021, ASX-listed Firefinch reported on Friday.
The miner told shareholders that some 3 494 oz of gold had been produced in January and 3 372 oz of gold during February, from the reprocessing of tailings.
The company is expected to start mining satellite pits in mid-2021, and to enable the processing of this ore, multiple capital works programmes were being undertaken at the processing plant and the tailings dam.
Firefinch earlier this year increased the indicated and inferred mineral resource estimate for the Morila pit, at the Morila mine, from 1.3-million ounces of contained gold to 2.2-million ounces of contained gold.
Firefinch in November of last year completed the A$28.8-million acquisition of the Morila project from gold miners AngloGold Ashanti and Barrick Gold, with the project currently producing at an annualised rate of up to 50 000 oz/y recovered gold from tailings.
However, Firefinch previously unveiled plans to increase production by restarting openpit mining at satellite pits and at Morila itself.