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 pluri-metric thick mineralized structure oriented NW- SE which has developed along the footwall of a reverse fault within a deformed granodiorite to quartz-monzodiorite intrusive. It has 500m of strike-length and dips from 25° to 40-45° towards the NE where it remains open at depth. There are two sets of structures: (i) the dominant shallow east-dipping structure that extends the full length of the deposit in a north-west direction, which is transected by (ii) steeper, north to northeast-dipping set of thinner quartz veins that crosscut the north-west structure. The structures are weakly to intensely foliated, sericite- carbonate-silica altered and are host to multiple generations of quartz-carbonate-sericite- pyrite-arsenopyrite veining. Arsenopyrite with quartz veining generally correlate with higher gold grades.

The North Kao deposit hosted in the Kao intrusive was hidden under a thick laterite cover laying over approximately 60m of saprolite. It consists of a stacked sequence of structurally controlled tabular bodies, defined by pervasive quartz-sericite-pyrite alteration, breccia and locally distributed stockwork, shear and extensional veins. Gold is closely associated with each of these features. The main one striking north to NNW. A new second zone unmined yet, the Kao North Eastern extension, discovered in 2017 is located 500m to the east, running parallel the eastern edge of the Kao Intrusive over known strike length of 800m. It is still open to the south.

The GGI deposit has continuous lenses of gold mineralized rock over an East-West strike length of 2,100m. It consists of up to 10 discrete lenses, ranging from five to 40m thick, dipping near vertically.

The GGII deposit is like GGI, with an East-West strike length of 2,400m. There are three to five steeply dipping lenses along strike, with widths ranging from 5m to 30m. Higher grade steeply plunging shoots that occur at distinct flexures along strike are targets for deeper drilling.

The Rambo deposit comprises several relatively small mineralized lenses with the main zone containing a steeply plunging mineralized shoot. The deposit has an east-west strike length of approximately 450m and dips steeply to the South, along with a down-dip length of 230m. Thicknesses of the mineralized zones ranges from about 2.5 to 25m.

The Nami deposit is composed of three mineralized lenses with shallow dips of 20 to 25° toward the west-southwest. The strike length of the Nami deposit is about 550m, with a down-plunge extent of 300m, and a thickness of the mineralized zone ranging from about 2.5 to 30m. The deposit, which exhibits good continuity, is open to the west, north and south.

The Yabonsgo deposit is located along a regional NE striking shear zone and is defined over 600m inside a 1.3km long by 175m maximum width vertical porphyritic granodiorite body intruding an extensive meta-volcanosedimentary unit. The mineralization is related to a system of stacked flat to low-dipping quartz veins centered on the intrusive. The deposit is open at depth and shows discontinuous extensions toward the SW and NE directions along the shear zone.

The Karma deposits have characteristics of mesothermal, shear-hosted gold deposits associated with orogenic activity. Elements of stratigraphic control may result from mineralization/alteration being channeled along specific structural/lithological controls, such as competency contrasts between intrusive and sedimentary rocks that have affected porosity and fluid flow. The Karma deposits may be best described as structurally controlled, orogenic, hydrothermal deposits.

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 RC drillholes dipping at 60 degrees on a 12.5m x 12.5m spaced grid pattern thus helping to refine well in advance the ore-blocks modeling and delineation.

Commercial production was declared on October 1, 2016. In Q4 2017 additional capacity at the processing facility became available due to the successful commissioning of the redesigned front- end and other plant optimization activities. Rambo deposit was mined out in Q4 2017. In 2018, mining activities focused on GG2 and Kao deposits.

There will be two separate crushing stations to treat the soft and hard ore. The soft rock circuit will be partially skid-mounted and moveable and will be supplied as a complete package from a vendor. The hard rock crushing plant will only be required intermittently when the more competent ore is delivered from the pit. The quantity of more competent ore will be minimal compared to the softer material that will be fed to the plant and as a result, the hard rock crushing plant will be moveable.

The soft rock circuit will produce a final product with a top size of 50 mm. This product will be achieved in a two stage crushing circuit employing a feeder-breaker and a double roll crusher. The feeder-breaker will size the ROM material, which will then be discharged onto the primary product discharge conveyor. The crushed material will be conveyed to the roller screen which will separate the oversize from the undersize. The oversize material from the screen will be discharge into a double roll crusher using a conveyor. The screen undersize and roll crusher product will both discharge directly onto the agglomeration feed conveyor.

The mobile hard rock crushing circuit will produce a final product of 80% passing 1.70 mm. This product will be achieved in a three stage crushing circuit which will be supplied as a complete package from a vendor. A jaw crusher will primarily crush the ROM material, followed by a secondary cone crusher and tertiary hammer mill both in closed circuit with dedicated triple deck screens. The hard rock crushing circuit product will be transferred to the agglomeration feed conveyor via a feed hopper and belt feeder.

The Karma process plant design was designed by SENET based on gold heap leach technology and consisted of two crushing circuits (for soft and hard ore respectively), agglomeration and stacking, heap leaching with cyanide solution followed by adsorption of the pregnant solution, elution and gold smelting. Services to the process plant include cement addition, reagent make-up, storage and distribution, water and air supply.

Recovery of gold is accomplished via heap leaching whereby the heap is fed with a mixture of crushed and sized ore that has cement and water added to form agglomerates that are transported from the process facility by a combination of fixed and portable conveyors to a radial stacker. The radial stacker builds the heaps and removable conveyors allow for the development of the heaps in a retreating direction back towards the main conveyor system beside the Heap Leach pads. The gold in the ore is extracted by an irrigation system which involves the spraying o ........