Acquired by Endeavour Mining (Endeavour) in 2016, Karma includes six identified gold deposits and is a shallow open pit with no blasting required and a low strip ratio, making it a low-cost operation.
First gold production was announced in April 2016 with commercial production being declared in October 2016. When first completed, the plant had a nameplate capacity of 4 Mpta, and a subsequent Engineering Cost Study identified several opportunities that could improve the performance of the plant and the associated costs of implementing these changes.
In October 2016, Endeavour awarded Lycopodium the contract to provide EPCM services on a lump sum basis for this upgrade. The scope included the process design, engineering design, procurement, construction management and commissioning of the new crushing circuit, a new absorption, desorption and refining (ADR) plant and associated infrastructure.
Specifically, these upgrades included:
- A new dry crushing plant connected to the existing leach pad conveyor network
- An upgrade to the cement addition plant
- A new ADR plant for the pregnant solution from the existing heap leach and to provide an eluted solution to the existing gold plant
- The modification and upgrade to the existing gold plant.
Practical completion for this project occurred in November 2017.
