The deposit is hosted in a series of near-vertical spodumene-rich pegmatites, trending approximately north-north-west and measuring up to 70m in true width. The pegmatite system dips steeply to the south-east and occur extensively, having so far been identified over a length of greater than 2.5 km and occurring over width of more than 1.4 km. The Ore Reserve is located in the northern sector of the known mineralisation and is over 1.4 km long and 1 km wide. It covers the Main, West and Sangar Ore Zones.

The mining technique will consist of conventional open pit mining, with abstraction through conventional load and haul using standard mining equipment. Mining is required to deliver a notional 2 Mtpa of ore as feed to the processing plant. The total quantities of materials to be mined from the open pits are:
• 31.2Mt of spodumene-bearing ore at 1.56% Li2O head grade.
• 109.1Mt of waste material.
• 140.3Mt of total material.
• Ore:waste ratio of 1:3.5 LOM.

The mining operation will be conducted on a seven day per week, 24 hour per day basis. Each day will comprise 3 x 8 hour shifts to comply with Malian labour law. The operation will deliver ore to a ROM pad and waste to a single large dump from the open pits.

Water, power and telecommunications are delivered to the mining operations from infrastructure developed elsewhere on site.

All material will require drilling and blasting, with costs for bulk explosives and blasting accessories based on budget quotes from two established explosives supply companies operating in the region.

Road and running surface maintenance is not expected to be onerous, since much of the running will be on firm floors. Maintaining these surfaces will be possible with planning and management. This is considered to be a compact site with a relatively small fleet required.

Ore will be delivered from the open pit to stockpiles on the ROM pad. This ore will then be rehandled for mill feed using a front-end loader for delivery into the processing plant feed hopper. Mill feed operations will be available 7 days per week, 24 hours per day, with a feed rate of up to 400 tph. Open pit mining to be implemented at the Project will be undertaken by a contract mine services provider.

Processing will be through a conventional spodumene beneficiation plant that incorporates crushing, reflux classification, dense media separation, milling, flotation, concentrate handling and tailings disposal.

Ore is loaded to the ROM bin by front end loader and is passed through a grizzly to remove oversize lumps. It is fed from the ROM bin by an apron feeder to a vibrating grizzly. Vibrating grizzly undersize goes to the primary crusher discharge conveyor. Vibrating grizzly oversize goes to the primary jaw crusher. Jaw crusher product is directed to the primary crusher discharge conveyor which transfers the crushed ROM to the secondary screen. The secondary screen oversize is transferred to the secondary crusher. Secondary screen undersize is directed to the secondary/tertiary discharge conveyor. Secondary crusher product is also directed to the secondary/tertiary discharge conveyor which directs crushed material to the tertiary screen feed bin. The tertiary screen feed ........