on-site laboratory leading the way in w africa

On-site lab plan proves West African gold has kept on booming
By Kate Emery | View Archive November 14th, 2011, 11:03 am
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If any confirmation were needed that the West African gold sector is still booming, Ampella Mining's decision to build its own on-site laboratory might be it.

The WA-based explorer made the move because of an assay backlog in West Africa's laboratories, which makes it tricky to work out just how much gold it's sitting on in Burkina Faso.

The lab should be up and running in January and it would hardly be a surprise if other players followed suit.

The rush to West Africa began in earnest in the past few years; the lure for juniors is it is one of the few places in the world where minnows can still uncover elephants.

Despite the lab delays, Ampella has been making strides towards defining the size of its Konkera deposit at the Batie West project, last week confirming it had added an extra 900,000 ounces to take its total resource to 3.1moz.

That gives it the biggest resource in Burkina Faso using a 1g/t cut off.

At least one analyst, DJ Carmichael's Paul Adams, expects that figure to rise to 4moz by June. Most of the additional resources came from depth extensions to the northern part of the deposit, with mineralisation still open along strike and at depth.

Ampella is scheduled to wrap up its pre-feasibility study by March and hopes to roll straight into a bankable feasibility study, to be which should be wrapped up by the end of 2012.

With about $27 million in the bank, Ampella will want to raise some cash sooner rather than later if it wants to keep up the pace of work at Batie West.

Assuming Ampella can hit its targets, it could be pouring gold by early 2014.

Meeting targets with any new project is hard - just ask Perseus Mining. The Ghana-focused group, and one of the West African success stories, is in the midst of commissioning its Edikan mine

On Friday Perseus said throughput rates and operating hours had been below target but recoveries were improving.

Meanwhile Perseus is beefing up its management team with the appointment of Wayne Nicoletto as general manager at Edikan.

**A common West African theme is for emerging players, anticipating consolidation, is to make themselves attractive targets.

Adamus Resources' tie-up with Toronto-listed Endeavour Mining is going ahead despite surprise news that Endeavour has sold its debt finance and related M&A advisory business to a group of Endeavour executives.

Adamus was quick to assure its shareholders that the business was immaterial and did not affect the board's support for the friendly merger-of-equals.

Adamus is already in production in Ghana but has been unable to take advantage of the gold price because of hedging. It plans to use Endeavour's cash to unhedge once the deal is done.