The Nampala deposit appears to be a quartz-carbonate veined mesothermal gold deposit. It is located in arenites affected by a geological accident oriented NE along the border of an intermediary intrusive that has basic components.

The Nampala gold deposit is a quartz veined area, which is mostly known from drilling. The main veins are oriented NNE and dip abruptly to the WNW. There are several stacking veins with conjugate veinlets between the main veins. The gold appears to be free and very finely grained.

Mineralization is mainly found in an arenite-type sedimentary unit and sometimes in the adjacent tonalite to the west. The area is bounded to the east by an argillite sequence with graphite and pyrite bands.

This mineralization has been mapped over an 800 m-long and approximately 300 m-wide area to a depth of 350 m.

The Nampala deposit will be mined using a conventional truck and shovel operation. Since the ore and waste (saprolite layer) are relatively friable. no drilling and blasting will be required. However, a bulldozer will be used to rip the iron-rich crust that covers the saprolite layer.

The proposed Nampala process plant design is based on conventional and well-known CIL technology. The process plant will consists of scrubbing, crushing. Milling, cyanidation by carbon in leach, Zadra elution method is utilized for recovery of gold from loaded carbon. The plant comprises also reagent mixing. storage and distribution facilities, water, air supplies and infrastructures.

The plant was assumed to treat 5 200 tonnes of saprolite per day. Nominal feed grade to the mill would be 0.70 g/t Au, but is expected to vary over the course of operations due to the nature of the ore body. The ore will be sourced from an open pit mine.

The ore from the bin will be withdrawn by an apron feeder to a belt conveyor that feeds a 3 m diam. by 8.8 m long Sepro scrubber. The scrubber has a nominal capacity of 250 tph.

The fraction - 6.25 mm +1.0 mm from the triple deck screen will be directed to a ball mill of 300 HP equipped with a trommel screen. The ore will be ground to a P80 of 150 micron. The trommel screen undersize flow by gravity to a pump box, and will be pumped back to the triple deck screen with a slurry pump.

Results of bottle roll tests conducted by SGS Lakefield indicated satisfactory gold dissolution to direct cyanidation and CIL for this ore. Acceptable dissolutions were obtained within a leaching time of 36 hours under normal CIL conditions and natural oxygen levels.

A total of 8 tanks, 1 leach and 7 CIL with a volume of 1800 m3 each will constitute the circuit, giving a total residence time of 30 hours to ensure efficient dissolution of gold and its subsequent adsorption onto activated carbon.

The undersize fraction from the triple deck screen at 42% solids will feed directly the leach tank where cyanide will be added for the leaching of gold into solution. The discharge from the tank will feed by gravity the 7-stage adsorption circuit where gold will be adsorbed onto carbon.

The loaded carbon will be subjected to acid washing and elution to recover gold. The acid washed carbon will be transferred (by gravity) into the elution column which will be sized at 1.2 t of carbon. Carbon will be stripped by the pressure Zadra method.

Pregnant solution exiting the column will be directed to electrowinning cells via a flash/ header tank where gold will be deposited on the cathodes as sludge and the barren solution will be circulated back to the elution tank.

Fully loaded cathodes will be periodically removed from the cells and the gold sludge will be washed off using a high pressure washer and the solution decanted. The gold sludge will be calcined and smelted.

The gold sludge from the electrowinning cells will be calcined in an electric fired calcination oven operated at 750 °C for drying. The dried sludge, once cooled, will be mixed with fluxes in a determined ratio and will be then transferred and loaded into a diesel fired smelting furnace operated at 1200 to 1400 °C. During smelting, metal oxides will form slag and once the furnace crucible contents are poured into cascading moulds, gold will solidify at the bottom while slag separates easily from the gold. The gold bullion will be cleaned, labeled and ready for shipping.