AMN - MALI: Senet wins Yanfolila project development

Hummingbird Resources, the West African gold company, has awarded the EPCM contract for its Yanfolila gold project in Mali to Senet. Senet will carry out detailed engineering and manage the mine construction at the 1.24 million tonnes/year gold project, for which the company recently closed a $71 million fundraise, ahead of anticipated production by the end of 2017.

Procurement has commenced on long lead items - ball mill, tower crane and CIL tanks.

Wayne Galea has been appointed as Yanfolila project manager to work with technical director Shaun Bunn.

Yanfolila offers:

-          132,000oz gold in first full year of production with LoM average production of 107,000 oz/year

-          IRR of 60% and an NPV of $162 million at $1250 gold price (IRR of 72% at $1350 gold price)

-          More than $70 million of free cash flow in first year full production at $1250 gold price ($85 million free cash flow at $1350 gold price)

-          AISC of $695/oz - which is expected to be in the lowest quartile of African producers

-          Significant upside from more than 1 Moz of gold inventory outside of the current mine plan within the mining permit

Hummingbird Resources managing director Dan Betts says: "With Senet contracted for Yanfolila's mine construction, detailed engineering has now commenced. We have been working with Senet for two years through the optimisation of the project and delivery of the Definitive Feasibility Study and we look forward to building a mine with them.

Senet was previously involved with Yanfolila when it was owned by Gold Fields so their knowledge of the project is second to none. Coupled with their long and impressive history of delivering quality projects in Africa, this gives us all great confidence.

Hummingbird Resources has two core gold projects, the near-term production Yanfolila and the Dugbe project in Liberia.

Its current focus is on bringing Yanfolila into production, which has a Probable Reserve of 709,800oz @ 3.14 grams/tonne gold and total Resources of 1.8Moz of gold and an additional 390,700oz of non-compliant exploration potential.

The 4.2 Moz Dugbe gold project in Liberia provides Hummingbird with excellent development upside. An optimisation of the Definitive Feasbility Study is ongoing while Yanfolila is brought to production in the near-term. Additionally, the company has 4000 sqkm highly prospective exploration ground in Mali and Liberia and is constantly evaluating new quality assets.

www.hummingbirdresources.co.uk

News courtesy of International Mining