(Kitco News) - On Thursday, Orezone Gold (TSX: ORE) announced that the Bombore gold mine in Burkina Faso has achieved commercial production, effective December 1, 2022.
The company said that it has declared commercial production at Bombore based on achieving 30 consecutive days of mill throughput exceeding 70% of nominal nameplate capacity of 14,250 tonnes per day and recovery reaching design levels of 90%.
According to the project's 2019 feasibility study, at base case gold price of $1300/oz, the project generates after-tax NPV5% of $361.0M and IRR of 43.8% with a 2.5-year payback. Mine life is 13+ years with life-of-mine gold production of 1.6M ounces and average annual production of 133.8k ounces in the first 10 years.
President and CEO Patrick Downey commented, "Commercial production at Bombore is a significant milestone and transforms the company to producer status. We congratulate the Bombore team for their excellent execution in achieving this goal.
"With our power supply issues now firmly behind us, we are focused on optimizing plant performance and steadily increasing throughput and availability with the objective of exceeding design capacity."
The company also reported that its management plans to provide annual guidance for Bombore in January 2023.
Orezone Gold is a Canadian mining company operating the open pit Bombore gold mine in Burkina Faso. The company owns a 90% interest in Bombore with the government of Burkina Faso retaining a 10% carried interest. The company is focusing on mining and processing the Phase I near surface free-dig oxides at a planned annual throughput of 5.2 million tonnes.
Orezone believes that Bombore has a significant underlying sulphide resource to support a substantially larger Phase II expansion. A 77,000 m infill and expansion drill program is ongoing and once completed, the company plans to issue an updated mineral resource and reserve statement and feasibility study, as part of this Phase II expansion. It is expected that the studies will be completed in H1 2023 to be followed by a production decision.
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