Name: Bibiani mine.

Location: The Bibiani gold mine is located 250 km north-west of Accra, in western Ghana.

Controlling Company: Noble Mineral Resources (100%).

Brief History: Operations at the Bibiani mine started in 1902 and closed in 1913 after recovering an estimated 70 000 oz gold. In 1927, mining activities restarted and the has changed hands several times.

The mine was nationalised in 1958 and operated by the State Gold Mining Corporation until it was closed again in 1968. In the late 1980s, Glamco and International Gold Resources began to acquire various rights to the old Bibiani mine and undertook exploration, which culminated in the delineation of an openpit resource and, ultimately, in restarting of mining operations.

Ashanti Goldfields bought then mine in the mid-1990s and after the merger between AngloGold and Ashanti Goldfields, the Bibiani mine was sold again in 2006 to Central African Gold (CAG).

CAG operated the mine for a short period until January 2009, but operational difficulties, low metallurgical recoveries because of a lack of process control and poor financial controls  – all exacerbated by the global financial crisis – resulted in Investec taking control of the asset.

In November 2009, Noble Mineral Resources announced its intention to acquire 100% of the CAG subsidiary, Central African Gold Ghana, the owner of the Bibiani mine and two contiguous exploration licences. Noble, with assistance from Investec, took management control of the site in December 2009. Production at the mine started after the first gold pour in March 2012.

Brief description: The mine is situated in the Sefwi-Bibiani belt, which hosts more than over 17-million ounces of gold and is the second-most significant gold-bearing belt in Ghana after the Ashanti belt to the east.

Products: Gold.

Mining Method: Openpit.

Reserves: Total proven and probable reserves in 2011 were 972 000 oz.

Resources: Total measured, indicated and inferred resources in 2011 were 2.8-million ounces.

Geology: The Bibiani gold deposit lies within Birimian metasediments and related rocks, which occur in the Proterozoic Sefwi belt of southern Ghana. Gold and gold-bearing sulphide mineralisation occurs in quartz-filled shear zones and in altered rocks adjacent to those shears. The full strike of the Bibiani structure is at least 4 km. For metallurgical classification there are three main ore types at Bibiani – primary, transition and oxide. Further lithological classification gives four ore types – quartz
(generally high-grade), stockwork (medium-high grade), phyllites and
porphyry (both low-grade).

Major Infrastructure and Equipment: The mine includes a fully operational mine site, with mine workshops, accommodation, a hospital, a school and a fleet of light vehicles and a 2.7-million-ton-a-year processing plant.

Prospects: An aggressive exploration programme is under way to add to the existing resource base at Bibiani, with recent drilling returning spectacular high-grade results from near mine targets.

Contact Person: Executive Manager Operations, Roger Bannister.

Contact details:
Noble Mineral Resources
Tel +61 8 9474 6771
Fax +61 8 9474 6772
Email admin@nobleminres.com.au