Banro Corp. fka BAA

[Flycanuck]

Public promotion of BAA. Banro Article in magazine: Mining Review Africa

Issue: February 2016

Theme: Bringing African Opportunities Home

Sub-Theme: Canadian Miners in Africa

http://www.miningreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/MRA-2-2016.pdf

Table of Contents: Page 10
Developing a world-class gold company one mine at a time TSX-listed Canadian gold producer Banro Corporation is setting its sights on further developing the 210 km, north-east to south-west trending Twangiza-Namoya gold belt in eastern DRC

Article:

BANRO CORPORATION - Developing a world-class gold company one mine at a time

Article in short <bubble annotations from all the great pictures in the article -- nice to see and well done!!!>

- With a measured and indicated resource of 7.73 Moz of gold and an inferred resource of 5.26 Moz, Banro Corporation’s four wholly-owned properties in the DRC host a major gold resource.
- Banro Corporation produced 183,369 oz of gold in 2015 from its Twangiza and Namoya mines, which was well within its consolidated production guidandancce of 175, 000 to 195,000 oz of gold.
- Banro will this year focus on immediately taking Namoya to steady-state production.
- Banro has set its sights on continuing to cost effectively explore near mine opportunities at its Twangiza and Namoya operations to enhance their respective rersereves and immediate term mining opportunities.
- Banro Corporation’s four wholly-owned properties in the DRC lie along the 210 km, north-east to south-west trending Twangiza-Namoya gold belt in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Atricle body:

Banro Corporation produced 183,369 oz of gold in 2015 from its Twangiza and Namoya mines, which was well within its consolidated production guidance of 175,000 to 195,000 oz of gold. With Namoya entering commercial production Banro will be able to significantly incease overall production in 2016.

Exploration drive
Having successfully exchanged its 2015 production milestone despite the tough gold mining environment, Banro has not slowed down, but has instead set its sights on continuing to cost effectively explore near mine opportunities at its Twangiza and Namoya operations to enhance their respective reserves and immediate term mining opportunities. Banro is aware of the longer term opportunities to also develop its Kamituga and Lugushwa mining licences. These projects also lie within the north-east to south-west trending Twangiza-Namoya gold belt, which is host to its operating mines.
While Banro’s exploration programme has been limited, owing to its immediate strategy of directing its energy and resources towards optimising production at the Twangiza and Namoya mining operations, the company’s exploration remains on-going.

Lugushwa
Lugushwa, the most advanced of the two exploration projects, consists of three exploration permits covering an area of 641 km2. It is located approximately 150 km south-west of the town of Bukavu. Lugushwa has an indicated mineral resource in the oxide portion of 16.91 Mt grading at 1.35 g/t gold containing 0.73 Moz of gold and an inferred resource of 6.17 Mt grading at 1.56 g/t gold containing 0.31 Moz of gold. Meanwhile, the transition and fresh rock portions of Lugushwa have an inferred resource of 65.01 Mt grading at 1.54 g/t gold containing 3.22 Moz of gold. The exploration objective at Lugushwa is to increase the oxide resource base.
Plans to achieve this include undertaking a preliminary economic assessment, which will be completed in 2016. This will then be
followed by a prefeasibility study thereafter. “The development of Lugushwa will however be determined by gold market conditions,” says Clarke. Current exploration activities at Lugushwa have been minimal and limited to low level ground maintenance and
oxide target generation activities for future follow-up.
The activities are mainly along extensions to the known 15.3 km north-east to south-west mineralised trend. These activities
include geological mapping, channel and rock chip sampling, limited auger drilling, pitting and low cost regional BLEG
sampling. Banro plans eventually to develop Lugushwa into a 1.5 Moz oxide resource, which is likely to be developed as an open
pit heap leach operation, says Clarke. “By the end of 2016, we would like to be in a position to determine which development mode to follow, either developing it alone or as a joint venture opportunity,” explains Clarke.

Kamituga
Exploration has also been on-going at the company’s fourth project, Kamituga. Kamituga is located 100 km south-west of Bukavu and hosts an inferred mineral resource (surface) of 4.14 Mt grading at 2.40 g/t gold and containing 320,000 oz of gold and an inferred
(underground) resource of 3.12 Mt grading at 6.00 g/t of gold containing 600,000 oz of gold.
Banro is continuing with low key regional exploration to identify additional drilling targets, with the current focus being on
new oxide target generation activities towards the south-west and north-western parts of the project using low cost auger
drilling, surface mapping and regional BLEG sampling.

Twangiza
Banro’s Twangiza mine has steadily increased its gold production since achieving commercial production in 2012 and its efforts going forward are focused on increasing throughput and gold production at its processing plant. With a mineral reserve of 22.98 Mt
grading 2.28 g/t gold containing 1.64 Moz of gold, Twangiza produced 135,532 oz of gold in 2015, an increase of 38% over 2014 production of 98 184 oz. This exceeds both the original and updated full-year production guidance of 115,000 to 125,000 oz of gold for Twangiza for 2015.
This production result was achieved as a result of Twangiza’s process plant operating as planned. The processing plant achieved a full year of throughput that was above the design throughput level of 1.714 Mtpa – an increase of 26% over the 2014 throughput of 1.358 Mtpa. Banro aims to increase Twangiza’s mill throughput by between 10% and 15% to over 2 Mtpa going forward.

Namoya
Meanwhile, having only declared commercial production at the Namoya mine on 1 January 2016, the mine is well on its way to make a growing contribution towards the company’s production as of 2016, Clarke said during in an interview on the sidelines of the 9th Annual Investing in African Mining seminar in London hosted by Africa-focused business development, marketing and educational company MineAfrica.
Namoya has a proven and probable mineral reserve of 20.53 Mt grading at 1.92 g/t of gold containing 1.27 Moz of gold, at a cut-off grade of 0.4 g/t of gold.
The progress at Namoya over the fourth quarter of 2015, in particular the sustained production achieved during December, when the full fl eet was operational, led to the company declaring commercial production. Gold production for the full quarter was 15,901 oz. Mining activities at Namoya improved through the quarter as the new fleet made incremental contributions toward this.
The CAT 777 mining fl eet, which was fully commissioned in early December, moved over 700,000 t of material for the month, compared with an average of approximately 369 000 t for the first 11 months of 2015.
The commissioning of the larger fleet represented the fi nal step toward Namoya being able to operate in a manner consistent with management expectations. With continued increases in mining activity, it is expected that monthly stacking levels at the heap leach will quickly advance to design capacity levels.
Meanwhile, Namoya’s heap leach stacking throughput is expected to produce at a rate of 2.6 Mt, but will be stress tested to over 3 Mt in 2016, in order to ensure that the mine will in future be able to maintain operating margins going forward, in the event of a declining gold price.
Ore stacked at the heap leach for the fourth quarter of 2015 decreased from the third quarter to 383 913 t, but the average grade of the material stacked was 2.35 g/t of gold. With over 40% of this gold stacked in December, Namoya’s gold production in the first quarter of 2016 is expected to realise the benefit of this higher-grade
material.
In 2016, Clarke says that Banro will continue to focus its efforts on exploring opportunities to enhance production at its operating mines by building on the existing plant infrastructure, in particular expanding the Twangiza crushing capacity.
“Banro will this year focus on immediately taking Namoya to steady-state production, and stress testing the existing asset bases both at Twangiza and Namoya to reduce unit costs through the efficient use of the existing equipment,” he says.
Future production potential and grade improvement at Banro’s operations foremost include near mine exploration at Namoya, which entails further exploring the Brownfi eld open pit Filon B prospect.
High grade drill results intersecting significant mineralisation were obtained from the first stage of the follow up drill programme in the Namoya Summit footwall zone bordering the Filon B area.
Drilling results included 16.00 m grading at 5.35 g/t of gold, 15 m grading at 5.00 g/t of gold and 24.00 m grading at 2.77 g/t of
gold.
Underground mining potential is also being investigated at both the Twangiza and Namoya mines.

OPERATION LOCATIONS
Banro’s first producing mine, the wholly-owned Twangiza mine, which achieved commercial production in September 2012, is located 45 km from Bukavu in the DRC and at the northern tip of the 210 km long north-east to south-west trending Twangiza-Namoya gold belt. Its second gold mine, Namoya, is located at the southern end of the Twangiza – Namoya gold belt. This mine entered commercial production in January 2016.
Banro’s Lugushwa and Kamituga projects, currently being explored, also lie within this belt. In addition to these four active properties, all of which have mining licences and cover a total of 2,613 km2, Banro holds 14 exploration permits covering 2,638 km2 and located on highly prospective ground between its Twangiza and Lugushwa projects.
Applications for additional exploration permits contiguous to and located between the company’s Lugushwa and Namoya properties, along with areas south of Twangiza, are pending.

Closing Quote: Having only declared commercial production at the Namoya mine on 1 January 2016, the mine is well on its way to make a growing contribution towards the company’s production as of 2016,” John Clark