Name and Location
Karouni gold project, Guyana.

Client
Troy Resources.

Project Description
A prefeasibility study (PFS) completed on the Karouni project’s Smarts and Hicks deposits considers a combination of two opencut mines feeding a conventional carbon-in-leach gold plant.

The study considers only reserves that can be mined using opencut mining and these total 2.62-million tonnes grading 3.8 g/t of gold.

The initial mining fleet will comprise two excavators and up to eight trucks. Initial production will predominantly be sourced from Hicks while Smarts overburden is removed. An additional fleet will be mobilised three months after the start of mining to provide further capacity for the Smarts operation.

Production will then focus on the higher-grade Smarts deposit. Mining will progress using three excavator fleets until the pits are complete.

Mining will be carried out on 2.5 m flitches over a 5-m-high blast. Initial sand overburden removal will be free dig, with no blasting required.

The processing plant will have a nominal throughput of one-million tonnes a year. Ore will be fed through a primary jaw crusher to a secondary cone crusher. Crushed material will be fed to a 3.2 MW ball mill for grinding, with material passing through a gravity circuit to recover coarse gold before the addition of cyanide. After the gold is dissolved in the leach circuit, it is collected on active carbon, which is then passed to an elution circuit, based on a modified Zadra stripping system, where the final product is smelted to produce gold doré bars.

The doré will be flown to the Guyana capital Georgetown for export to a refinery. Waste tailings will be pumped to a tailings facility.

The PFS assumes that 2.61-million tonnes of material, with an average grade of 3.84 g/t of gold, will be processed, with recovered gold production of 303 526 oz over a three-year mine life.

The Smarts pit is expected to produce 1.77-million tonnes of plant feed at 4.70 g/t of gold, have a mining strip ratio of 9.6:1 and be mined to a depth of 120 m.

The Hicks pit is expected to produce 840 000 t of plant feed at 2.02 g/t of gold, have a mining strip ratio of 4.6:1 and be mined to a maximum depth of 80 m.

Net Present Value/Internal Rate of Return
The project has an after-tax net present value at 6% of $72-million, an after-tax internal rate of return of 50.2% and a payback period of 1.2 years.

Value
Total cost to construct and commission the project is estimated at $77.5-million.

Duration
Not stated.

Latest Developments
The Karouni project is delivering ahead of expectations, owner Troy Resources has said, with the product to date producing some 35% more ounces than predicted by the ore reserve model.

The project, which poured its first gold in November last year, produced 20 195 oz of gold during the three months to March 31 at a C1 cash cost of $412/oz and an all-in sustaining cost of $638/oz.

Key Contracts and Suppliers
None stated.

On Budget and on Time?
Not stated.

Contact Details for Project Information
Troy Resources, tel +61 8 9481 1277 or fax +61 8 9321 8237.