Karma is located in the Paleoproterozoic Baolé-Mossi domain of the West African Craton, specifically in the Birimian supracrustal rocks, which were probably developed upon a juvenile Paleoproterozoic crust (ca. 2.40-2.20 Ga).

Karma is situated in the regionally east-west trending Goren greenstone belt. The geology consists of a folded sequence of greywacke, siltstone, shale in the south-east and clastic, volcaniclastic and mafic volcanic rocks to the north-west. The western margin of the project area presents a broad north-south magnetic lineament that is interpreted as a first-order, crustal scale, sinistral, shear zone named the Ouahigouya Shear Zone (OSZ). The OSZ extends from the south into Boromo Greenstone Belt and branches in the Karma project into a series of north-east trending sub-shears reactivated during the Eburnean Orogeny between 2,130 and 1,980 Ma.

Substantial areas of Karma are covered by lateritic units, dominantly gravels and cuirasse, which form a highly indurated upper part of the lateritic regolith. A few lateritization events have resulted in weathering to depths of up to 120m. Laterites and sand cover limit the extent of bedrock outcrop in the project area and have limited the geological understanding of the region.

Seven mineral deposits at Karma have been defined up to now over the project area, namely, Kao, North Kao, GGII, GGI, Nami, Rambo and Yabonsgo deposits.

The Kao deposit is centered on a metric to ........

The Karma mine plan consists of multiple open pits which are developed in a sequence, with multiple pits being mined at the same time, to provide the ore feed for the heap leach operations.

The mining method at Karma is conventional open-pit mining using loading and hauling equipment to transport ore from the pit to the ROM pad. Mining is done by three Komatsu PC-1250 excavators and thirteen Komatsu H785 100 t dump trucks. The load and haul fleet are supported by an ancillary fleet including a wheel dozer, four track dozers and two motor graders. After an extensive tender process Karma transitioned to contractor mining in June 2020 when SFTP was awarded the mining contract. The transition included equipment, spare parts and tooling purchase. The majority of the on-site mining workforce was immediately employed by SFTP.

The material mined is primarily free digging, although during certain periods of the LOM, drill and blast activities is required at a relatively low powder factor to blast hard laterite or clay material. Drill and blast activities is carried out by SFTP and explosives are supplied by BME. Explosive used is INNOVEX 100. Emulsion product is pumped down 115mm diameter holes and 10m deep with a sub-drill of 1m. The production drill fleet consists of one DP1500 Sandvik Drill Rig – top hammer, mainly drilling 115mm-127mm diameter holes.

In 2019 the grade control program was modified at North Kao by the implementation of 30m length R ........

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