15th Feb 2019 08:59
LONDON (Alliance News) - Gold miner Centamin PLC on Friday reported a doubling of the resource at one project and a maiden resource at another, both in the Ivory Coast.
The resource at the Doropo project has risen by more than double, to 2.1 million ounces indicated gold and 800,000 ounces inferred.
Doropo has 50 million tonnes of ore at a grade of 1.3 grammes of gold per tonne of ore indicated, and 19 million tonnes at the same grade inferred.
Centamin completed 57,000 metres of drilling at Doropo during 2018. The new resource is within a six kilometre area, and is suitable for open pit mining, it said.
The FTSE 250 company has budgeted for 55,000 metres of further drilling in 2019 to develop resource extensions and look further into the resource. A preliminary economic assessment is on course for the second half of 2019, and a maiden mineral reserve by the second quarter.
At the ABC project, meanwhile, Centamin's maiden resource for the South Kona prospect contained 19.6 million indicated tonnes of ore containing 650,000 ounces of gold.
The inferred resource is 16.1 million tonnes of ore with 450,000 ounces of gold.
Centamin has drilled 25,000 metres so far at ABC, with 65% of that focused on South Kona. It has found "encouraging" intercepts at Kona Central, and plans 34,000 metres further in 2019 at the two prospects.
Chief Executive Andrew Pardey said: "Doropo continues to demonstrate the potential to be our next organic development project. Ongoing exploration and concurrent viability studies will further unlock the potential future scale of this project as we assess the economics against our internal project value creation criteria.
"The preliminary economic assessment is progressing well and we look forward to reporting the results to the market at the end of second half 2019. Delivery of a maiden reserve and further feasibility work are critical milestones for 2019, ahead of a board decision on capital allocated for development."
"The success and scale of the 2018 ABC discovery results and the reporting of the maiden Kona South resource in less than two years of active exploration, highlights the scale and quality of the Lolosso gold corridor and the regional generative potential of the ABC land package," Pardey continued.
Centamin was 2.5% higher early on Friday at a price of 121.85 pence each.
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