Endeavour Mining plc (LSE:EDV, TSX:EDV, OTCQX:EDVMF) (“Endeavour”, the “Group” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce that the first gold pour from the Lafigué mine in Côte d’Ivoire was achieved on 28 June 2024, marking the successful delivery of the project construction on budget and a quarter ahead of schedule.
Ian Cockerill, CEO, commented “We are proud to have achieved our first gold pour at Lafigué, which, alongside the first gold pour at the Sabodala-Massawa BIOX expansion that we achieved in April, marks the successful completion of the recent phase of investment and growth that we started in Q2-2022. We now begin a new phase of increased free cash flow generation, de-levering and enhanced shareholder returns.
The Lafigué project is the fifth project that we have successfully built in West Africa in the last decade, which is a testament to the strength of our in-house project construction team and is a demonstration of our competitive advantage in West Africa, the world’s most prospective and largest gold producing region.
Lafigué is an excellent example of our ability to leverage this advantage by self-generating a project pipeline. We discovered Lafigué for a cost of $31 million, equivalent to an industry-low discovery cost of just $12 per ounce of M&I resources. The project was quickly advanced through technical studies and permitting, before construction was launched in Q4-2022, and first gold was delivered only 21 months later for a low capital intensity of approximately $150/oz of M&I resources. In less than eight years we have transformed Lafigué from a discovery to production, creating a cornerstone asset that has the potential to produce over 200koz per year, at an industry leading all-in sustaining cost of approximately $900/oz for at least 13 years, improving the quality of our existing portfolio.
We believe this level of value creation is repeatable in West Africa, and we have already identified the Assafou deposit on the Tanda-Iguela property in Côte d’Ivoire, where we have delineated a top tier resource and another potential cornerstone asset, which will underpin our next phase of organic growth in a few years time.
With the current phase of organic growth completed, we are now focused on quickly ramping up our recent development projects to maximise their returns and support our near-term capital allocation priorities of de-levering our balance sheet and enhancing our shareholder returns.”
Since the start of wet commissioning on 30 May 2024, approximately 77kt of ore has been processed through the Lafigué processing plant, with all circuits operating in line with expectations. The first gold pour included gold from both the gravity and CIL circuits, and yielded approximately 380 ounces of gold. The Lafigué mine is expected to achieve commercial production and ramp up to its nameplate capacity of 4.0Mtpa in Q3-2024.
