An update on the proposed sulfide treatment facility and rerouting of the Bibiani-Goaso Highway at the Bibiani Gold Mine has been released by Asante Gold Corporation.
New road alongside Bibiani Pit. Image Credit: Asante Gold Corporation
Sulfide Plant Progress Update
The installation of the sulfide facility is critical to the Company’s objectives to increase gold output at Bibiani to more than 250,000 ounces per year. The 2024 Bibiani Technical Report details the estimated cumulative output of 1.2 million ounces of gold over the following five years at lower all-in sustaining costs.
The factory is scheduled to be completed in the first quarter of 2025, with a total capital expenditure of roughly $30 million. Once operational, gold recovery from sulfide ore processed at Bibiani is predicted to grow from 70% to approximately 92%, leading to higher gold production and lower AISC. On this premise, the predicted payback period for the sulfide plant is only four months.
The sulfide plant is a unit operation that will be incorporated into the current process plant. It will involve rougher flotation to create a sulfide concentrate accounting for 10% of the overall process plant feed.
This concentrate will be thickened and reground to 25 microns to extract gold at 35 microns or higher. The material will be processed with high-intensity leach, and the tailings will be returned to the main carbon-in-leach facility.
Civil works on the sulfide facility are currently 55% complete, and construction is proceeding on schedule and under budget. In 2022, long-lead time equipment was ordered, including the flotation equipment, thickening, grinding mill, and structural steel for the regrind section.
Shipment of these products will begin in mid-August 2024, with delivery to the Bibiani facility beginning in September 2024. Other essential equipment, including as pumps, instrumentation, switchgear, an Aachen reactor, and leach tank agitators, are also being procured. All of the project’s structural steel and plate work will be manufactured in Ghana.
The extra connected power load, with an operational load of 2.4 megawatts, is around 3.5 megawatts in terms of energy requirements. Mining Process and Project Engineering (MPPE), a Ghanaian engineering firm, is advancing detailed engineering. The project Execution Plan, created and published by the Ghanaian project management company Jet-Rom, is estimated to be completed in six months.
When the sulfide plant is completed, Asante intends to produce roughly 20,000 ounces per month at Bibiani, consistent with the company’s long-term mining strategy. Asante looks forward to completing the sulfide plant as it continues to develop and optimize its existing mines.
Rerouting of the Bibiani-Goaso Highway
On June 3rd, 2024, traffic was rerouted onto a new road built to retain access to the Bibiani-Goaso highway. This enabled the closure of the section of the road affected by the mine's expansion plans. As previously disclosed, rerouting the highway will allow the Company to access 170,000 ounces of contained gold from the main pit over the following 12 months. The ore was previously inaccessible.
The Company completed its first round of grade control drilling on June 10, 2024, and began delivering oxide ore to the process plant on June 14th, 2024. The process facility has recovered around 85% of the gold from this oxide ore.
In addition to improving short-term gold recovery, mining south at Bibiani's main pit defers full sulfide ore processing until the sulfide plant is constructed. This will allow Asante to extract around 92% of the gold in the sulfide ore, up from the present recovery rate of around 70%.
Financial Initiatives
Asante has hired Endeavour Financial to conduct a thorough and non-dilutive financing exercise to enhance the company’s balance sheet and position it for future growth. At this point, the project is well underway, and the Company anticipates reporting substantial news in the near future.