Projects

The Yanfolila Gold Project is a low-cost, high-grade open-pit mining operation located 40 km west of the town of Yanfolila (250 km south of the capital, Bamako, by road) in Mali. The project consists of two open pits – Komana East and Komana West – feeding a gold carbon-in-leach (CIL) processing facility capable of treating 1.24 Mt/a of ore and producing up to 120 000 oz of gold per annum.
 
SENET was the primary engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) contractor during the development of the project, which was executed in two distinct phases. Phase 1, which commenced in 2016, involved the design and installation of a conventional CIL process plant that consisted of primary and secondary crushing, single-stage closed-circuit ball milling, with gravity concentration, intensive leach of the gravity concentrate, CIL of the gravity tailings, elution, electrowinning, and gold sludge smelting to produce gold doré. Phase 1 poured first gold on time and within budget in December 2017.
 
Phase 2, which was a brownfields development, began in 2018 and involved the design and installation of a secondary ball milling circuit for the treatment of 100 % fresh ore through the plant. Commissioning of Phase 2 was successfully concluded in Quarter 3 of 2019 – meeting all client time and budget expectations.
 
When fully operational and operating with 100 % fresh ore, the new ball milling circuit will be able to increase the throughput capacity from 1 Mt/a to 1.24 Mt/a.