Guinor boosts reserves

With the planned purchase of a mill from the Kelian mine in Kalimantan, Indonesia, Guinor Gold (GNR-T) has brought a large resource into reserves at its Dinguiraye gold operation in northeastern Guinea.

The mill, which Guinor agreed to buy from the Kelian Gold Mines subsidiary of Rio Tinto (RTP-N) in November 2004, will allow Guinor to process unweathered sulphide mineralization as well as the oxidized material it is now mining at Dinguiraye. Guinor is paying US$15 million for the carbon-in-leach plant, a price that gets the dismantled plants on to barges in the navigable Mahakam-Belayan river system.

The reserves at Lero-Karta, the westernmost deposit on the Lero-Fayalala trend at Dinguiraye, rise to 13.5 million tonnes grading 2.2 grams gold per tonne. At Fayalala, there is now a reserve of 14.8 million tonnes at 1.4 grams per tonne, and at the five smaller deposits in the corridor — Kankarta, Banko, Tambico, Sanoukono and Folokadi — there is a total reserve of 7.9 million tonnes with an average 1.4 grams gold per tonne.

Oxide reserves at Dinguiraye — consisting of laterite and clayey saprolite, which is heap-leached, and clean saprolite, which is dump-leached — were pegged at 1.3 million tonnes averaging 3.6 grams gold per tonne at Lero-Karta and another 1.3 million tonnes averaging 2.1 grams at Fayalala. A further 1.1 million tonnes, at 3 grams, were held in three other pits and the stockpile at Karta.

Over the past year, Guinor’s exploration drilling has also substantially increased the resources at Dinguiraye. Lero-Karta now sports a measured and indicated resource of 25.1 million tonnes averaging 2 grams gold per tonne and Fayalala 32.8 million tonnes grading 1.3 grams per tonne. Between the five other working deposits, there is a resource of 7.6 million tonnes at 1.7 grams per tonne, and stockpiled material at Karta contributes 2.6 million tonnes at 1.1 grams per tonne. All those resources include the proven and probable reserves.

Guinor’s current plan is to increase its mining rate to 6 million tonnes annually, with the Kelian plant coming into operation in the third quarter of 2006.