The Mana district is located in the northern part of the Houndé greenstone belt. Five gold deposits, WonaKona, Nyafé, Fofina, Yaho and Siou, are hosted in different rock types. The lithostratigraphic succession is typical of greenstone belts and is characterized at the base by a major tholeiitic basaltic suite with some intercalations of argillic sedimentary rocks that are overlain by predominant pelagic and detrital sedimentary rocks (shale, sandstones, greywacke and volcanoclastics). The Mana district basalt unit has undergone submarine hydrothermal alteration with epidote, chlorite and local albite, and shows zones of strong silicification, some of which are anomalous in gold. The Paleoproterozoic formations are affected by polyphase deformation and greenschist facies metamorphism with amphibolite facies assemblages that locally occur as metamorphic aureoles around some later formed granitoids.

All deposits on the Mana property are characterized as typical West African, shear-hosted orogenic gold deposits. The major sulphides associated with the gold mineralization are pyrite and arsenopyrite. Free visible gold is encountered at the Wona-Kona and Siou deposits. Magnetite occurs as small millimetric prisms along schistosity planes in the walls of mineralized zones. The five major deposits of the Mana property are described below.

The Wona-Kona deposit is hosted in a series of deformed sedimentary, volcano-sedimentary and metavolcanic rocks. The gold mi ........

Two mining methods are employed at the Mana Mine, namely open pit and underground. Open pit mining will continue in 2021 in the Wona South pit, and underground mining at Siou. Following completion of the updated PFS, underground mining will be employed below the Wona open pit, in addition to the existing Siou underground mine.

OPEN PIT MINING
Open pit mine production at Mana averages approximately 5,000 t/d of ore (bedrock), and mining has been mainly active in the Wona and Siou pits prior to 2021.

The Siou open pit was exhausted in 2020, and open pit production will focus on the southern half of the Wona pit in 2021 and 2022, through to completion of that pit. Mining is carried out using a mix of ‘owner’ and ‘rental’ fleets. The equipment ranges from 120-250 t backhoe excavators, loading 90 t rigid dump trucks. Drilling is currently carried out using a combination of Endeavour owned and contracted drill rigs.

The current stages of the open pit mining require waste stripping (Stage 3) for approximately eight months, to remove ~8Mt of waste before reaching ore. During this waste stripping, ore supply to the plant will be from the underground mining at Siou and the open pit mining of Wona South (Stage 2).

Production drilling and blasting is carried out on 10m benches. Loading and hauling is carried out in four flitches each measuring 2.5 m. The highly weathered zone of oxide (clays and saprolite) and transitional zone with a d ........

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