The Bissa and Bouly gold deposits all occur within an approximate 90 km NW-SE zone, comprising Birimian volcano-sedimentary rocks of the Boromo greenstone belt. The belt consists of mafic volcanic rock, minor felsic volcanic rock and extensive sedimentary units, intruded by Eburnean granitoids, all of which have undergone incipient to low greenschist facies metamorphism (Huot and Sattran, 1987).

The Bouly deposit, approximately 9 km east of the Bissa-Zandkom corridor, is hosted by shear zones within metamorphosed metavolcanics, diorites and porphyritic diorites. The volcanosedimentary sequence is well foliated, with a NE-SW striking fabric. The meta-volcanics are intruded, and mostly replaced, by later diorite, granodiorite and porphyritic diorite bodies, which are not well foliated except in areas where extensive shearing has occurred. As per the BokenZandkom corridor, two phases of deformation are recognised. The earliest deformation phase is associated with NW striking, moderately SW dipping thrust structures. The second deformation phase is associated with NE striking, steeply SE dipping strike slip structures.

Mineralisation at the Bissa and Bouly deposits is primarily orogenic and structurally controlled, with a secondary lithological control. The most significant mineralised zones are associated with anastomosing networks of quartz and quartz-carbonate veins (or stacked, parallel “arrays” of veins) developed within major brittle-ductile shear zones.

Gold mineralisation is most commonly developed in either quartz-sulphide veining ± carbonates and tourmaline, or disseminated and fracture filling sulphides and magnetite. Across most deposits, the primary sulphide species is pyrite, with minor chalcopyrite and arsenopyrite and very rare native gold.

As is typical in the region, the Bissa and Bouly deposits are variably oxidised. The oxidation sequence typically comprises a thin (0 to 20 m) lateritic layer at surface, which overlies a welldeveloped oxidised saprolitic zone. This normally progresses into a transitional zone, comprising a mixture of saprolite and fresh bedrock, with un-altered fresh rock typically around 50 m to 125 m below surface. Secondary enrichment of gold within the laterite layer is common.

The Bouly operation extracts material from multiple open pits. The ore is hauled to the heap leach pads, while the waste is hauled to the waste dumps.

Production is undertaken through conventional drilling, blasting, loading and hauling processes.

Ore is crushed to a target 100% -45 mm 80% -21 mm using two parallel trains, each train consisting of a single Metso C140 jaw crusher, preceded by a vibrating grizzly with a nominal 102 mm aperture, followed by a single Metso HP800 cone crusher preceded by a double deck screen with apertures 80 mm and 25 mm.

The Bouly process plant treats low grade non-refractory oxidised saprolite and transitional saprock hosted gold ore by heap leaching, with gold doré produced at the Bissa plant. The plant commenced production in 2016 with a design production rate of 7.5 Mtpa of ore.

Heap Leaching
Cement is added from storage soils to the crushed ore at a typical rate of 10 kg/t, and the ore is then agglomerated using a 4.6 m diameter, 14.0 m long agglomeration drum, to which is added barren leach solution at a nominal rate of 115 L/t of ore. The ore is then transported to the leach pad using a series of overland conveyors, feeding onto mobile grasshopper conveyors and finally to a radial stacker. The lift height is 10 – 12 m and the pads are designed to ultimately consist of four lifts with potential to stack up to six lifts being investigated. An interlift liner and drainage are installed for each lift. Leach solution is applied using wobbler sprinklers. The nominal leach cycle is 150 ........