The Assafou-Dibibango (Assafou) Project is located on the Tanda-Iguela property in Côte d’Ivoire. The gold project is being developed by West Africa-focused Endeavour Mining.
The company obtained the Tanda permit in late 2015 and the Iguela permit in May 2017, with the maiden resource announced in November 2022.
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In December 2024, Endeavour announced the results of a Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS) for the Assafou project. The PFS confirmed Assafou’s potentiality and alignment with the company’s strategic goals.
The study forecasts an average annual production of 265,000 ounces, with a mine life of 14.5 years.
The study predicted an average annual production of 265 thousand ounces per annum (kozpa), with a mine life of 14.5 years. It will entail an initial capital investment of $734m including contingencies.
The Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) on the project is expected to be completed between late 2025 and early 2026.
Assafou Project Location and Geology
The Tanda and Iguela permits are situated in the eastern region of Côte d’Ivoire, approximately 600km northeast of the city of Abidjan.
The Assafou site features gold mineralisation primarily hosted in Tarkwaian Sandstone, particularly at or near the structural contact with the Birimian Basement rocks. The mineralisation remains open along strike towards the northwest and southeast, as well as at depth.
Gold occurs as disseminated occurrences in pervasively altered sandstone and within or at the edges of quartz (±carbonate) veins and breccias that intersect the altered sandstones.
Alteration is marked by silicification and the presence of pyrite. Increased silicification and pyrite presence generally indicate higher mineralisation levels in the sandstones. High-grade mineralisation and the thickest intercepts are located near the structural contact between the mafic Birimian Basement rocks and the Tarkwaian Sandstones at the northeast boundary of the Assafou deposit.
The deposit is monometallic with mineralisation starting at the surface and extends beyond 300m in depth, maintaining continuity along the northwest trending structure separating the Tarkwaian Sandstones from the Birimian Basement rocks.
Assafou Project Reserves
The gold project contains probable reserves of 72.8 million tonnes, with a grade of 1.76 grams per tonne (g/t) of gold, for a gold content of 4,115 thousand ounces.
Indicated resources are estimated at 73.6 million tonnes at 1.95g/t, leading to a total gold content of 4,604 thousand ounces.
Mining and Processing
The Assafou deposit’s mineralisation, extending from the surface to depths beyond 300m, is well-suited for conventional open-pit mining.
Mine planning, resource, and cost estimation for the PFS are based on a contract mining operation with a maximum capacity of 62.5 million tonnes annually.
Approximately 36.5 million tonnes of pre-stripping is anticipated during the pre-commercial production period to support an accelerated production ramp-up. The DFS will explore reducing pre-stripping impacts by supplementing ore feed with near-surface ore from the Pala Trend 3 deposit, located 1km from Assafou.
Diesel excavators and trucks will be employed for loading and haulage operations. The contractor fleet is expected to include 300-tonne and 200-tonne class face excavators to load 140-tonne capacity dump trucks for waste mining, and 200-tonne class excavators for ore mining.
The ore will be processed through a 5.0 million tonnes per annum processing plant.
Over the life of the mine, the plant will process approximately 89% fresh ore and 11% oxide and transitional ore.
The processing involves two-stage crushing followed by a high-pressure grinding roll and a ball milling circuit. A primary gyratory crusher will crush the ore to a coarse size, followed by dual secondary cone crushers, which will feed a crushed ore stockpile leading into a high-pressure grinding roll circuit.
The ore will then pass through a conventional ball mill and be milled to 80% passing 106 microns.
The milled ore will go through a gravity circuit with two Knelson concentrators for separation and recovery of coarse free gold, producing a gravity concentrate for cyanidation and electrowinning, which can be smelted into gold doré.
A high gravity recovery rate of approximately 60% is estimated for both fresh and oxide/transitional ores at Assafou.
The remaining milled gravity tail will be screened and processed through a carbon-in-leach (CIL) circuit, which includes one pre-leach tank and six CIL tanks in series for leaching and absorption, with a leach residence time of about 36 hours.
Gold will be recovered from activated carbon via elution, electrowinning, and gold smelting to produce gold doré.
Gold recovery rate is expected to be 94% over the mine’s life.
