African juniors get their time in the sun

Hummingbird Resources is one such success story, having built and started up its Yanfolila gold mine in Mali on time and on budget at the end of last year.It achieved its first gold pour within three and a half years of acquiring the project from Gold Fields for US$20 million and CEO Dan Betts has not been shy about singing the company's praises."It's extremely unusual for a junior who has never built a mine before to build one on time and on budget in a country that speaks a foreign language," he told Mining Journal.The miner is aiming to ramp up to full-scale nameplate production in about three months, with Betts noting that plant throughput was already at 75% capacity.Yanfolila is scheduled to produce an average 107,000 ounces per annum over its nine-year mine life at a grade of around 3g/t and all-in sustaining cost of $695 per ounce."It's a case of spending the next, however long, making sure we have a streamlined operation and delivering consistently to that nameplate capacity," Betts said.During 2018, Hummingbird is looking to carry out drilling of existing resources at Yanfolila to convert some of its exploration potential into greater reserve life, and continue work on its Dugbe project in Liberia, which has a defined resource of 4.2 million ounces at a grade of 1.39g/t."[Dugbe is] the perfect example of an opportunity to reenergise and reengage with a project that's really been dormant for quite a long time while we've been building the mine in Mali," he said."I think that we're in great shape … There have been so many cases where there have been failures in the junior mining space and I kind of feel the industry needs a win. If we can provide that, that's great."It's extremely unusual for a junior who has never built a mine before to build one on time and on budgetAnother junior worth watching is Cora Gold, in which Hummingbird is a 33.85% shareholder. It listed in October as part of a spinoff from Hummingbird and the £3.45 million (US$4.8 million) raised has allowed it to focus on an aggressive exploration programme in Mali where it owns the Sanakoro gold project.The company recently completed stage-one drilling, which covered about 3,000m of a planned 15,000m RC programme."Drilling is ongoing, with the next stage testing about a further 2km of new areas. The objective of these programmes is to identify new zones of gold mineralisation that are of sufficient quality to justify being included in a larger resource drilling programme," Cora Gold CEO Jon Forster said.The programme will continue until mid-2018 with the aim of demonstrating the potential size of the project, before reverting back to infill drilling for resources.Cora Gold also holds a portfolio of projects near the Yanfolila mine and Forster said the company had identified drilling targets at one of these, and planned to start first pass drilling this quarter.Perseus ramps upPerseus Mining is well on its way to transitioning to a multi-mine, multi-jurisdictional operator in West Africa.It delivered crushed ore to the mill and carbon-in-leach plant at its Sissingue gold project in Cote d'Ivoire in mid-December, on time and on budget."We're pouring gold this month and then we'll ramp up to full-scale production by the end of the quarter. So we'll have a full quarter of production coming from Sissingue for the June quarter," Perseus CEO Jeff Quartermaine told Mining Journal.The project is scheduled to produce around 70,000ozpa at an AISC of $628/oz over the full five-year life of mine.The company will also start further exploration around the Sissingue area by the June quarter, as well as developing its Yaoure project in Cote d'Ivoire for which it has lodged an exploration permit application and hopes to receive approval by the end of the June quarter."When we were doing the sterilisation drilling as part of the definitive feasibility study, we identified mineralisation of the area of the proposed site of both the mill and tailings dam. What we need to do is ... make sure we select a site for the mill that doesn't sit on top of anything we want to mine at a later date," Quartermaine said.The Yaoure DFS completed at end of October 2017 confirmed average gold production of 215,000ozpa at an AISC of $734/oz for the first five years and a post-tax internal rate of return of 27%.Perseus will also be doing further drilling inside the optimised pit shell where it hopes to convert around 250,000oz of inferred resources into reserves. Once that's carried out, it will move into front-end engineering and design towards the end of the June quarter.The company recently appointed a leading corporate advisor in preparation for project finance."We're thinking certainly in the range of six-to-nine months to get that in place and as soon as we have confidence that the funding is there, we'll be looking towards taking a development decision," Quartermaine said.It will take 18 months to build the mine once full-scale construction is launched. The historical mining shaft at Orion Mineral's Prieska project In Burkina Faso, Orezone Gold owns 100% of the Bomboré gold project, which comes with total measured and indicated resources of 4.77Moz at a grade of 0.68g/t.In November, Orezone announced high-grade intercepts from targeted areas at Bomboré as part of a RC drilling programme started in July, although said more drilling was required in some areas to confirm the geometry and continuity of discrete higher-grade zones.Orezone CFO Joe McCoy said the company planned to complete a new DFS based on a simplified revised flow sheet that will mine and process only shallow soft free digging oxides.A previous DFS envisaged average gold production of 116,000ozpa over the 10.7-year life of mine at an average AISC of $678/oz. It also foresaw a post-tax IRR of 24.4% and a net present value of $196 million (5% discount). "Based on work to date, this will significantly reduce the capex from the 2015 study and improve economics. We also plan to commence the relocation programme so that we can proceed to the construction phase in 2019," he said.Also in Burkina Faso, Sarama Resources is drilling at its 100%-owned Bondi deposit, which has a historical inferred resource estimate of 150,000oz at a run-of-mine feed grade of 2.7-3g/t and is part of the ThreeBee project.It also has stakes in nearby joint venture projects — South Houndé with Acacia Mining and Karankasso with Savary Gold.CEO Andrew Dinning said reconnaissance aircore drilling had tested several new targets away from the Bondi deposit, and the results would require follow-up exploration.The Djarkadougou property, which holds the Bondi deposit, is believed to have the potential to deliver significantly more gold than what's held at Bondi and Dinning said Sarama is eyeing up extensions.Near-term exploration in 2018 would entail further AC drilling of new targets and auger sampling where the regolith cover on the property is thought to be masking conventional soil anomalies.This will be followed by RC drilling and possibly diamond drilling to test some interesting geophysical anomalies.The company is also close to finalising a whole new area play in the northern part of Burkina Faso's Banfora belt, which already has great logistical and energy infrastructure.Outside goldMoving away from gold, Orion Minerals is developing the Prieska zinc-copper project in South Africa, a former operating mine that has a historical non-JORC-compliant reserve of 23.8 million tonnes at 1.57% Cu and 4.26% Zn.The mining rights application and environmental impact assessment is due to be submitted before the end of the March quarter.In the meantime, drilling is continuing, with 44 intersections completed since May in the deep sulphide target and its extensions. This also includes metallurgical test work."Drilling continues to confirm the results from historic intersections and to identify promising extensions to mineralisation already anticipated in historic mine plans," the company said.It has also started investigations into early mining of potentially significant zinc-copper mineralisation within accessible areas of existing mine infrastructure.A significant milestone for the Prieska project includes declaring a maiden JORC-compliant resource over the 105 level target and deep sulphide target in the March quarter. A bankable feasibility study will follow before the end of the year.Orion is also evaluating the 2012 resource estimate and feasibility work on the Jacomyspan project, also in South Africa, and anticipates releasing a JORC-compliant maiden resource shortly.Another non-gold rising star to watch is Rainbow Rare Earths, the 90% owner of the Gakara rare earths mine in Burundi, the only such mine in Africa and the highest-grade rare earth mine globally with the initial pit tested at 62% total rare earth oxides.Rainbow had a busy 2017, managing to move from listing on AIM in January, to bringing Gakara into production in December on time and on budget.Production guidance for the 2017-18 financial year is 2,250-3,000t of REO concentrate, with a ramp up to 6,000t per annum during 2019.The listing, which raised $8 million, provided Rainbow with the funds necessary to bring the Gakara project into production and pay off some historic debt, Rainbow CEO Martin Eales told Mining Journal.Rainbow is now looking at another busy year, having already announced its maiden drilling campaign ahead, with results anticipated in April. It has an exploration target of 20,000-80,000t of mineralised material grading 47-67% TREO. "In addition to this, we expect to consistently ramp up our production of rare earth mineral concentrate in order to target a production run rate of 5,000 tonnes per month before the end of 2018," Eales said.

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