Gold miner Toro Gold’s Mako mine, in Senegal, continues to outperform production and cost forecasts, while maintaining a strong safety record, CEO Martin Horgan says.

The mine had maintained its performance momentum from 2018 over the first quarter of this year, with operations, gold production, cost control and safety all meeting or exceeding set targets.

Processing operations continued to impress with 528 000 t milled at an average grade of 2.91 g/t gold against a budget of 450 000 t at 2.66 g/t gold – with metallurgical recoveries in line with expectations, at 94%.

This, in turn, led to improved gold sales of 47 519 oz – 18% above budget for the period.

Unit costs were helped by this production “outperformance”, resulting in cash costs for the period of $611/oz versus a budget of $659/oz.

Toro says the mine remains on track to deliver on the full-year production guidance of 157 000 oz.

In the months ahead, the company will focus on implementing a new life-of-mine (LoM) plan at Mako.

Toro, working with third-party consultants and engineers, in April completed an optimisation study for the Mako mine as a basis for the new LoM plan.

The study was based on a combination of drilling and operational data gathered over 2018.

The optimisation study sought to increase the total reserves of the mine, as well as the yearly throughput rate, without requiring significant additional capital expenditure (capex) and or reducing the existing six-and-a-half-year mine life.

The study managed to achieve all these targets, with 105 000 oz added to the reserves for a total of 893 000 oz.

At the same time, mill throughput has been increased to 2.3-million tonnes a year.

Further, the study showed that the LoM plan could be achieved using the existing mining fleet and mine infrastructure without the need for any significant capex.

Starting from January 1, 2019, the new LoM plan envisages total ore mined of 14.7-million tonnes at 2.01 g/t gold with a strip ratio of 5.4 t waste per 1 t ore.

The stockpiling cutoff strategy successfully employed in 2018 is used and results in an annual mill feed of 2.3-million tonnes a year, with metallurgical recoveries of 93.8%, leading to average production of 144 000 oz/y of gold over the first six years.

This leads to an average cash cost forecast of $754/oz over the remaining mine life using current consumable and fuel pricing, which is about $90/oz lower than the previous LoM plan.

Further exploration has been undertaken since November 2018 at Mako and the surrounding area, with the aim of adding further mill feed to the reserve base.