West Africa-focused gold miner Avesoro Resources (TSX, AIM:ASO) has reopened at its Youga gold mine in Burkina Faso after being forced to halt operations last week as a precautionary measure as a group of armed artisanal miners broke into facilities, attempting to steal ore from the mine’s stockpile on Aug. 8.
The Youga mine is in Boulgou province, 180 km southeast of Burkina
Faso’s capital of Ouagadougou.
Youga has a measured and indicated resource of 16.64 million
tonnes grading 1.73 g/t gold for 924,200 contained ounces of gold. The mine
produced 110,751 oz. gold in 2018.
Avesoro acquired the gold mine, along with its Balogo gold mine, in December 2017. The licence contains seven open-pit deposits and a 1.1 million tonne per year carbon-in-leach processing facility.
Government security forces currently remain on site in order
to protect the company’s assets.
The miner, which has a track record of not only successfully
building low cost mining operations, but also turning around non-performing
assets, has experienced rapid growth to date.
Avesoro’s plan is to become a larger 500,000-ounces gold producer in the next two to three years, and it intends to achieve this goal through a combination of organic and inorganic growth — mergers or acquisitions.
The junior, however, recently had to cut annual output guidance for both Youga and New Liberty mines by 30,000 ounces because of operational challenges experienced earlier in the year.
The company, which also owns the Batouri asset in Cameroon
and Balogo in Burkina Faso, is currently progressing a prefeasibility study
(PFS) for an underground extension at New Liberty. The report is expected to
include the first open-pit reserves from the Ndablama satellite deposit
and is set to be concluded towards the end of the first quarter.
More to come…