The Morila permit is situated in the northern portion of the West African craton between the NNE trending Birimian volcano-sedimentary belts of Kalana-Yanfolila and Syama. The region is underlain predominantly by Lower Proterozoic meta-volcanic and metasedimentary sequences (Birimian) and large areas of granitoids. The whole package of rocks has been deformed by the Eburnean Orogeny. The permit area locates along a contact between Birimian metasediments and the Eburnean granitoids.

The Morila orebody is developed within upper greenschist to amphibolite facies of pelitic and psammitic rocks. Their mineralogy is dominated by biotite (30%), plagioclase (30%) and quartz (30%).

The package has been intruded to the southwest by a tonalite body similar in composition to the Morila sediments. The sediments have been locally metasomatised by the tonalite to produce a feldspar porphyroblastic texture.

Arsenopyrite is generally associated with mineralisation and is by far the most dominant sulphide (80%) followed by lesser amounts of pyrrhotite (15%) and pyrite (5%) The pyrrhotite is ubiquitous throughout the metasediments and occurs as irregular grains which often contain inclusions of chalcopyrite. It is not uncommon for visible gold to be present.

Gold mineralisation is predominantly associated with coarse arsenopyrite, occurring as individual grains on arsenopyrite grain boundaries or as intergrowths or as free gold in a silicate mineral ........

The 2021 plan was to supplement and then replace tailings as the primary mill feed with feed from open pit mining of the satellite deposits until ore became available from the main Morila pit
(Morila Super Pit). The material mined via hydraulic sluicing of tailings reduced to approximately from 435,000 tonnes per month to 100,000 tonnes per month during the year. Hydraulic sluicing will cease in April 2022.

Tailings with mineralisation (~0.5g/t gold) that could not be hydraulically mined have been mechanically mined and hauled to the Run of Mine (ROM) pad for stockpiling and have been scheduled for processing in Q1 2022.

Open pit mining operations commenced at the Morila Pit 5 and Viper deposits in the second half of 2021.

Satellite Pit
Current gold production is from the hydraulic mining of tailings. A number of additional ore sources will be mined in conjunction with, and subsequent to, tailings commencing in June 2021; tailings production is planned to cease in December 2021. The ore sources include:
• Mechanically mined tailings from the dam floor and now stockpiled on the ROM pad;
• The Viper, N’Tiola and Koting satellite pits located 22-25 kilometres to the north via haul road;
• Morila Pit 5 near-surface pit and adjacent to the Morila Super Pit.

The N’Tiola, Viper and Koting deposits will be mined by open pit methods. Ore and waste will be mined using a conventional mining fleet provided by mining con ........

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The new LOMP ( Life of Mine Plan) envisages mining and processing of some 37.5 million tonnes at 1.33 g/t gold at 1.45 million recovered ounces of gold for an average annual production of 160,000 ounces of recovered gold to 2030.

The processing rate of tailings material in recent years has been up to 6 million tonnes per annum. Open pit ore will require the re-start of the crushing and grinding circuits at Morila. Extensive refurbishment work has been completed and re-commissioning of crushing and grinding circuits is scheduled for May 2021. Open pit ore processing will initially ramp up to approximately 3 Mtpa, then with process improvements and upgrades will increase to approximately 4 Mtpa.

The Morila processing plant is a conventional Carbon in Leach (CIL) facility and commenced operating in 2000. The process is well established for the extraction of gold. It is assumed that metallurgical recoveries will match those historically achieved by ore from deposits ........