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 bin directs material to two tertiary screens and the oversize from these screens is directed to the tertiary crusher feed bin which directs feed to the tertiary crushers. The product of the tertiary crushers is directed to the secondary/tertiary discharge conveyor and thence to the tertiary screen feed. Screen undersize from the tertiary screens is final crusher product, which is 100% passing 5mm and goes via the fine ore conveyor to the fine ore storage bin.

Fine ore is discharged from the fine ore storage bin and onto the reflux classifier. Reflux classifier overflow is directed to the mica removal screen where coarse mica is removed as a final tail to screen oversize. The mica removal screen undersize is pumped with Reflux classifier underflow to the feed prep screen. The feed prep screen underflow is directed to the ball mill discharge hopper. The feed prep screen overflow goes to DMS stage 1. DMS stage 1 floats are combined with the mica removal screen oversize and disposed of via truck in the waste rock dump. DMS stage 1 sinks are sent to DMS stage 2 feed. DMS stage 2 sinks are directed to DMS concentrate storage at 5% (nominal) moisture. DMS stage 2 floats are directed to the ball mill feed. The ball mill discharge flows to the ball mill discharge hopper. Mineral slurry from the ball mill discharge hopper is pumped to the ball mill classifying cyclones. Cyclone overflow (P80 106 µm) goes to attritioner feed and cyclone underflow recirculates to ball mill feed. Attritioner discharge is pumped to the desliming cyclones and cyclone overflow (slimes at minus 20 micron) goes to the tailings thickener. Desliming cyclone underflow is directed to flotation as flotation feed. Flotation consists of two stages of rougher, 3 stages of cleaning and one cleaner scavenger. Combined flotation tailings are directed to the tailings thickener and combined flotation concentrate is filtered and sent to flotation concentrate storage at 7% (nominal) moisture.

The DMS concentrate and flotation concentrates are blended to maintain Concentrate specification, loaded to specialist truck trailers by front end loader and transported by road to the Port of Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, where they are loaded to ship in bulk for transport to the customer.

Tailings thickener overflow is directed to the process water pond for re-use in the processing plant and tailings thickener underflow is pumped to disposal in the Tailings Storage Facility (TSF). The TSF is fitted with a surface water decant system and water recovered by this system is also directed to the process water pond for re- use in the process plant. Make-up water to the process water pond is supplied from the raw water dam.