Turaco Gold Managing Director Justin Tremain outlined the company’s rapid growth at its Afema Gold Project in Côte d’Ivoire, telling investors the company has built one of West Africa’s leading gold development assets in under three years.
Turaco acquired its interest in Afema two-and-a-half years ago with no defined resource and a market capitalisation of around $20 million.
The project now hosts a 4.7 million ounces gold resource, with an updated estimate due by year-end expected to push that figure towards 5 million ounces.
Turaco’s market capitalisation has grown to approximately $800 million, with institutional investors now holding roughly 40% of shares.
“I don’t think that could be achieved in any other country in the world,” Mr Tremain said, crediting Côte d’Ivoire’s government policy, infrastructure and community support.
National gold production has quadrupled over the past decade, he noted, aided by the operating track record of established miners including Endeavour, Perseus and Fortuna.
Mr Tremain pointed to the project’s infrastructure advantages as a key differentiator. Afema sits 32 kilometres from a hydro dam connected to the national grid, allowing the company to source power at roughly 14 cents per kilowatt hour, about a third of the cost of standalone generation.
A sealed road runs through the project site, with the planned process plant located just three kilometres off that route.
“Of course, it’s all the geology that allows you to go from no resource to 4.7 million ounces in two-and-a-half years,” Mr Tremain said.
“We have a big contiguous package of about 1,600 square kilometres in the south east part of Côte d’Ivoire, and it covers one of the best and most prolific gold belts in West Africa, the Sefwi Belt.
“We essentially have control of the Sefwi Belt as it extends into Côte d’Ivoire. This is one of the top belts in West Africa, a region that produces twice the gold that Australia does every year.”
The Afema resource spans a cluster of deposits within a five-kilometre radius, anchored by the flagship Woulo Woulo deposit that has grown to 1.7 million ounces since its discovery by Turaco, while the separate Jonction deposit sits about 10 kilometres away.
“There was no resource [on Woulo Woulo] when we came into it, and that will underpin the development of our project. It is a very straightforward deposit, very simple clean metallurgy, free-milling zone with recoveries above 90%,” Mr Tremain said.
“It is a bulk zone of mineralisation, moderate grade at around one gram [per tonne], but very low strip ratio.”
That ore will be supplemented with a series of higher-grade deposits sitting along the Afema shear, starting with Jonction and Anuiri deposits that sit around 2 g/t as open-pitable reserves.
The Afema project currently has a 10-year mine life and is forecast to produce more than 200,000 ounces a year for the first seven years.
“As a 200,000 ounce [per annum] gold development project, not just within West Africa, but in all of Africa, this is a top four or five project – what sets us apart from some of our peers there, is this resource is growing faster than any of those other projects.”
