AMN - MALI: Accelerated Kobada gold timeline

African Gold Group has developed an accelerated construction development timeline for its fully licensed Kobada Gold Project in southern Mali. The fast-tracked schedule will reduce construction from 23 months to 19 months and will also provide significant savings in EPCM costs and working capital.

The detailed design has been completed on much of the process plant while initial infrastructure has been completed on the main camp and the construction camp.

Lower power requirements have resulted in smaller, short-lead time equipment for process plant.

Kobada is a fully licensed and permitted advanced development project in the prolific Birimian Greenstone belt. The company is working towards delivering the definitive feasibility study later this quarter as a final step before commencing construction.

Incorporating significant experience from other West African operations, SENET has assisted in designing the process plant for the project, which is very similar to other operating plants in the region.

The mine is designed with ease of construction and operation as a priority. The simplified and compact process plant flowsheet minimises the requirement for expensive and long lead process equipment, thereby substantially reducing the construction time.

African Gold's chief operations officer Danny Callow said: "We are very fortunate to be working with SENET, part of the DRA group, on the Kobada Gold Project. "SENET has been active in West African region for over 25 years, and there are very few projects in this region that SENET has not been involved in.

"Utilising known technology to develop a robust plant flowsheet suitable for West African conditions, yet simple and flexible in design, has allowed us to fast-track the development of the engineering to a stage where much of the plant is now at detailed design level. This allows us to shorten the schedule significantly and save on engineering costs.

"This achievement is made even more remarkable by the fact that SENET engineers and designers have had to work remotely due to the current lockdown conditions in South Africa."

African Gold also intends to outsource key specialised components of the plant from best in class providers, including a state-of-the-art hybrid, solar PV, thermal and battery storage system, fuel storage and supply, and the mining and TSF contract to reduce upfront capital cost.

www.africangoldgroup.com