The Ada Tepe mine is a low sulphidation epithermal gold-silver deposit. High gold grades in association with electrum-bearing open-space fill colloform-banded and lattice-bladed silica-carbonate-adularia veins and hydrothermal breccias and the presence of sinter, suggest proximity to the paleosurface and a low sulphidation character.

Mineralization at Ada Tepe is subdivided into two types, based on the geometry and style of the mineralized zone, as follows:
• “Wall Zone” mineralization: a massive shallow dipping (15 degrees north), siliceous body forming the hanging wall to the detachment and defining the contact between the core complex and the overlying sedimentary rocks, and;
• “Upper Zone” mineralization: a series of predominantly east-west trending steeply dipping veins that exhibit textures indicative of forming within an epithermal environment and extend upwards into the sedimentary breccia unit above the Wall Zone.
The Ada Tepe mine is approximately 600 metres long (north-south), and up to 350 metres wide (east-west). The wall zone is up to 30 metres thick. The thickness of the Upper Zone vein mineralization is very variable, from less than one metre thick, to more than 30 metres thick. The Wall Zone exhibits very good continuity. The Upper Zone vein system exhibits less continuity than the Wall Zone, necessitating a higher drilling density that has been applied during the delineation of the Ada Tepe mine.

All ore and waste are mined via conventional, open pit mining methods, and utilizes conventional mining techniques to separate ore and waste. The mining equipment considered suitable for the mining operation at the Ada Tepe mine includes two 2.4 m3 bucket capacity excavators, and eight haul trucks with a payload capacity of 40 tonnes.

The process plant facility completed in the first quarter of 2019 comprised crushing the mined ore in the primary jaw crushing circuit, grinding in a SAG milling circuit followed by a further secondary grind in a verti-mill circuit. The floatation uses SFR’s (Staged Floatation Reactor) for the rougher/scavenger and two stage cleaner flotation circuit. Final concentrate is dewatered and filtered before being bagged and shipped. Tailings from the concentrator are thickened to a high solids content (around 60% by weight) and placed in the IMWF cells along with waste rock from the mine.

All ore will be reclaimed from the run-of mine pad by a front-end loader (FEL) and fed to the feed bin. This will be fitted with a static grizzly to prevent oversize rocks from entering the bin.

Ore will be drawn from the ROM bin via a variable speed feeder and discharged into a jaw crusher to produce a crushed product P100 of 200 mm and P80 of 125 mm. The primary crusher product wil ........