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NEWS
Gryphon goes underground
Gryphon Minerals Ltd has identified
a potential underground mining op-
portunity at its Banfora gold project in
Burkina Faso.
And managing director Steve Parsons
told Paydirt he was confident of secur-
ing vital project development funds within
the next few months.
Gryphon reported last month that a re-
cent geological and engineering review
of the project had demonstrated potential
for a future underground mining opera-
tion below the proposed Nogbele North
open pit.
Drilling to prove up a high-grade un-
derground resource at Banfora was due
to start at the time of print. An explora-
tion target of 3.5-4.5mt @ 5-7 g/t gold
for 560,000oz-1 moz has been set for an
area down to a vertical depth of 400m
below the current open pit design.
Last year’s drilling at Nogbele North
returned a number of high-grade inter-
cepts, including 2m @ 148.62 g/t gold
from 35m (including 1m @ 296.4 g/t), 3m
@ 120.53 g/t gold from 61m (including
1m @ 358.01 g/t), 4m @ 152.65 g/t gold
from 19m (including 1m @ 569.01 g/t),
10m @ 14.74 g/t gold from 29m and 8m
@ 10.85 g/t gold from 132m.
“We identified some very high-grade
material when we were undertaking our
grade control drilling for the banks,” Par- get a funding solution in place that wasn’t
sons said.
“We then went and spoke to a mining
engineering group that has done a lot of
work up in West Africa on underground
mining and we showed them our re-
source and got them to put in what the
latest mining costs are for underground
mining in West Africa.
“That report came back looking very,
very positive and basically confirmed that
yes, this is underground material, without
a doubt, and would make money…so our
game plan now is to look at the under-
ground coming on board as a Stage 3
approach to our production scenario.”
This is not the first time Gryphon has
considered an underground mining sce-
nario, however, the company has always
held the view it would be uneconomic
to target the deeper material until it had
drilled through at least 50m of the depos-
it’s oxide cap.
Gryphon released a robust BFS for the
3.6 moz Banfora project in August 2014,
but a dwindling gold price at the time
prompted the company to go back to the
drawing board and assess other devel-
opment options.
PAGE 14 MAY 2016 AUSTRALIA’S PAYDIRT
Gryphon is targeting an underground resource of up to 1 moz gold at Banfora
The result was an upscaled scoping
study focused on the simultaneous build
of a 2 mtpa heap leach facility and a 1
mtpa CIL plant. Based on a $US1,250/
oz gold price, the study found the project
could produce 133,000 ozpa over an ini-
tial seven-year mine life for $US130 mil-
lion in capital costs.
“Once we’re down through the open pit
and into where the higher grade material
sits at the bottom of the pit, we’ll be look-
ing to try and get into an underground
scenario and taking that production up
closer to 200,000 ozpa,” Parsons said.
“It’s very high-level study work at the
moment and we plan to get some holes
drilled into it in the coming weeks to show
that it is robust and then we’ll update the
study work accordingly.”
In other good news for Gryphon, pro-
ject funding appears imminent. Parsons
said his company was in the final stages
of negotiations with a number of banks
and alternative financiers.
Gryphon has a financing mandate of
up to $US60 million with Macquarie Bank
and a healthy cash position of $14.4 mil-
lion.
“Things last year with the gold price
the way it was made it difficult for us to
going to cost us a fortune,” Parsons said.
“Now things are much better and I’m hop-
ing over the next few weeks we’ll have
some good news to release to investors.
“Finding the full funding solution to get
our Stage 1 heap leach project up and
running has always been the key thing for
us and once that’s sorted and finalised,
then obviously we’re off to the races.
“We have a mining permit in place and
we’re ready to go on the build, it’s just
about making sure we have an appropri-
ate funding solution. With the gold price
back up around $US1,200/oz or more,
that makes it much easier for us to get
the project off the ground.”
Parsons was also confident the new
Kaboré Government had brought some
much-needed political stability to Burki-
na Faso after a period of uncertainty
following the end of Blaise Compaoré’s
reign in late 2014.
“The new party is in power and life
is back to normal,” Parsons said. “This
didn’t really affect anything that was go-
ing on in the mining industry, but it made
it difficult for mining investment in the
country until things were sorted out.
“However, in the last two months we’ve
seen an enormous amount of capital
suddenly going into mining in Burkina
Faso…so I think this year should be a
pretty exciting year for the country.”
Parsons pointed to Endeavour Mining
Corp’s recent $US250 million takeover
of True Gold Inc as well as the former’s
$US350 million build of the Houndé pro-
ject as key milestones for Burkina Faso’s
mining industry – and ones that are vi-
tal to Gryphon’s chances of developing
Banfora.
– Michael Washbourne