The Wahgnion Gold Mine declared commercial production effective November 1, 2019.
The mine plan for Wahgnion focuses on open-pit mining of four initial gold deposits within the mine lease. The Nogbele, Fourkoura and Stinger deposits fall into the Nogbele land tenement while the Samavogo deposit is in the Dierisso tenement.
The Wahgnion processing plant is adjacent to the Nogbele deposit, which contains approximately 50% of total mineral reserves. The Fourkoura, Stinger, and Samavogo deposits are located within 25 kilometres of the plant.
Plant design is based on a conventional carbon-in-leach (CIL) gold process flowsheet consisting of primary crushing, semiautogenous grinding and ball milling, with a pebble crusher, CIL gold extraction, elution, electrowinning, and gold smelting to produce doré on site.
Throughput is designed to range between 3.0 and 3.2Mtpa, depending on the blend of soft and hard ore. The average predicted plant gold recovery is 92%, with soft (oxide) material recoveries from some zones reaching as high as 95%.
For further information on Wahgnion, please view the latest NI 43-101 technical report for Wahgnion filed in July 2019.
Updated Mine Plan
Since commercial production, the processing plant has performed approximately 25% above nameplate capacity for throughput and gold recovery, resulting in higher than planned production. As such, Teranga has updated the mine plan to accommodate the higher plant throughput capability, increasing Wahgnion’s average annual production by 25% and reducing the mine life to 10 years.
With a goal of extending the mine life to 15 years, a multi-year drilling and exploration campaign is underway around three of the existing deposit areas and at more than a dozen promising targets.
For further information on the updated mine plan, please refer to the press release dated August 6, 2020.