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Toronto, Ontario:“The Boto Gold Project generates impressive returns and margins, and we are very pleased to now be in receipt of the exploitation permit. We thank the Government of Senegal for their ongoing support of this Project. Situated in the highly prospective Boto-Karita-Diakha gold district, the Project is well positioned to benefit from further discoveries. Work is already underway to obtain approvals for the next steps, supporting either a decision to proceed to full construction or further de-risk prior to construction approval.” GORDON STOTHART President and Chief Operating OfficerIAMGOLD
IAMGOLD Corporation yesterday announced that the Government of the Republic of Senegal has approved the mining permit application for the Boto Gold Project for an initial period of 20 years, principally under the provisions of Senegal’s 2003 mining code. The receipt of the mining permit positions the Project for a development decision and eventual production.
Boto is one of IAMGOLD’s most advanced growth projects. Based on the results of various development and operating optimizations undertaken since the completion of the Feasibility Study (“FS”) for the Project, Boto is expected to produce an average of 160,000 ounces of gold per year during the first six years of operations, averaging 130,000 ounces of gold per year at all-in sustaining costs of $842 per ounce sold over a mine life of approximately 11 years. With expected initial capital expenditures of $271 million, the Project represents an after-tax Net Present Value (6% discount) of $219 million using a gold price assumption of $1,350 per ounce.
Gord Stothart, President and COO of IAMGOLD, said, “The Boto Gold Project generates impressive returns and margins, and we are very pleased to now be in receipt of the exploitation permit. We thank the Government of Senegal for their ongoing support of this Project. Situated in the highly prospective Boto-Karita-Diakha gold district, the Project is well positioned to benefit from further discoveries. Work is already underway to obtain approvals for the next steps, supporting either a decision to proceed to full construction or further de-risk prior to construction approval.”
OPTIMIZATION WORK
The FS issued in October 2018 was used to support the application for an exploitation permit, which was received as noted above, in December 2019. During 2019, the project team completed further engineering work to optimize the project. Work included condemnation drilling, plant engineering, water management optimization and additional resource drilling. The update of the reserve block model (“BM”) resulted in a modest reserve decrease compared to the 2018 FS. Based on the revised BM and results of the optimization work, including the mining plan, and review of the forecast capital and operating cost estimates, the economic analysis of the project was updated as outlined above.
The optimization study confirms the preferred development approach to be a conventional truck and shovel open pit mining operation with a mineral processing circuit incorporating primary crushing, grinding, and cyanide leaching, followed by gold recovery using carbon-in-pulp, stripping and electrowinning.
Open pit mining includes approximately 13.7 Mt of waste stripping and 1.2 Mt of ore stockpiling in pre-production mining during a thirteen month pre-production period followed by 11 years of production mining along with stockpile reclaim. The maximum mining rate is 38 Mt per annum. The average ore grade is 1.71 g/t Au and the LOM stripping ratio is 7.5:1.
Future Work
The project team is now focusing on long lead items engineering and critical path activities to be in a position to rapidly launch the project in case of either a decision to proceed to full construction or further de-risk and optimize the project prior to construction approval. The exploration team is conducting a delineation drilling program to target the conversion of additional inferred resources to an indicated category, which may be upgraded to reserves, as well as continuing exploration to expand resources in proximity to the resource pits on the exploitation lease as well as regionally.