Bouly Heap Leach

In January 2013, gold producer Nord Gold N.V. (Nordgold) announced the commencement of production at its Bissa Mine in Burkina Faso. The project, completed on time and on budget, delivered to Nord Gold its second operating asset in Burkina Faso, a landlocked country to the north of Ghana, West Africa.

For Bissa, Lycopodium delivered detailed design, procurement, construction management and commissioning services for this greenfield gold carbon-in-leach plant and associated infrastructure. It was the first complete EPCM project undertaken by Lycopodium in Burkina Faso and provided valuable local knowledge for future endeavours in that country.
The mining industry in Burkina Faso is growing at a rapid rate due to a combination of a stable elected democratic government, excellent geology and a competitive fiscal regime.
Nordgold is now expanding the Bissa mine with the development of the nearby Bouly project, some 5 km from Bissa. The project represents a large low-grade gold mineralisation, favourable for heap leach treatment.

In 1Q2015, Nordgold finalised a Feasibility Study with Lycopodium being awarded the contract to be the lead consultant for metallurgy/processing, engineering and production of the overall study report. On completion of the study in January 2015, Lycopodium was awarded the EPCM contract to develop a Heap Leach facility capable of treating 7.5 Mtpa of gold-bearing ore.
With Engineering and Procurement services completed, Lycopodium personnel mobilised to site in July 2015 to commence Construction Management services. First ore on the Leach Pad was achieved on 28 April 2016, with final handover and transfer of care, custody and control to Bouly Operations being achieved July 2016.

The project’s safety performance was excellent. Lycopodium and Norgold’s corporate culture, site management commitment, leadership qualities and employee involvement formed the backbone of the good safety performance. With 560,000 hours of construction and commissioning expended on the project, not one Lost Time Injury (LTI) was recorded.

In a July 2016 release, Nikolai Zelenski, Nordgold’s CEO said: “We have continued to invest in our development programme, in particular, Bouly which we expect to launch in the third quarter – on time and under budget. Bouly, our third mine in Burkina Faso, will make a meaningful contribution to our full-year production and further strengthens our position as the leading gold producer in the country.”