Shares in Australian based minerals exploration company Signature Metals (ASX : SBL) have gone up after the company announced that mining at the Konogo gold project in Ghana’s Ashanti gold belt has commenced.
The Perth based mining firm owns 70% of the gold project which has received environmental clearances to proceed with mining operations.
After permission from the Ghanaian Environmental Protection to recommence mining and processing at Konongo Signature Metals shares shot up 10% to 3.2 cents a share. The Old Konongo Tails Dam contains resource of around 61,150 ounces of gold in the indicated and inferred categories.
The Australian listed company has released a statement claiming that ore was being stockpiled with the reclamation of the Old Konongo Tails Dam. The company said that sampling of stockpiles returned up to 18g/t gold. Historically the production at the mine has been 1.6 million ounces at 11.8g/t gold.
Signature Metals also plans to begin haulage of the ore next week. Local earth moving contractors have been contracted by Signature Metals to carry out mining, haulage and haul road maintenance. The junior miner hopes to develop this project into a plus 100,000 ounce annual gold producer. It currently has an existing JORC Resource estimate of over 1.2 million ounces.