Good morning, everybody. Welcome to today's Many Peaks Minerals webinar. My name is Alex Cowie. I will be hosting Travis Schwertfeger, Managing Director at Many Peaks. Following yesterday's excellent ASX release, Travis will be discussing the updated Mineral Resource Estimate, which increased Ouarigue by an impressive 57%, to bring it up to 2.1 million ounces at a grade of 1.9 g a ton, which was achieved just six months after the maiden resource was published. Travis will also talk to the upcoming studies today and ongoing work. There will be Q&A following the presentation as well, so please submit questions via Zoom, and I will pose them to Travis when we get to that section. Please take it away, Travis.
All right. Thanks for that, Alex. Yeah, just to quickly run through the highlights of yesterday's release, and yeah, we will also be touching on the exploration upside here. Obviously, this is an interim release, and we see this as a growing story, where we are still waiting for a grant of an application to the south of our project, which will give us a dominant control of close to 40 km of strike extent on an underexplored greenstone belt, where in less than two years' time, we have advanced just the zone within this blue box on the map here to a + 2 million-ounce resource.
It is built fairly quickly, and we intend to continue that aggressive pace to take this towards development, as we see we have something economically viable at hand, and concurrent with feasibility studies and working this towards development and production over the coming years, targeting breaking ground in 2028 and pouring gold in 2030, we believe is realistic objectives. We will be building ounces concurrent with that work. Again, the 2 million ounces at 1.87, that is an increase, predominantly came from some underground, which we will take a look at. Some of those key intercepts were 189 m at 3.6. That was a bit of an oblique angle. True width is about half that, but still a very impressive 95 m true widths. We are also seeing very good grades just below the pit floor. There is 116 m.
Again, this is a pervasively mineralized intrusive body that we will take a look at some sections for. But close to the pit wall, and this is why we are building so many ounces so quickly in a pit, is you have 116 m at 2.8, but below the pit, then there is still 42 m at five within that intercept. So, we are seeing some strong underground grades, and that will continue to grow with additional drilling. The metallurgy at this time is just a snapshot. We will run through why we believe there is upside there, but yeah, in good conscience, we did not see just holding onto the 90% assumptions we have had before. 85% seems like a lower end of the spectrum to us, but we have gone with that number until we get a bit more data to quantify what metallurgical recoveries will really be.
I think in our integrated Scoping Study coming up, we are doing PFS-level work on our open pit, but we believe with the additional ounce in the underground, it is a bit more realistic to look at this as a whole project study. As we have so much inferred still in the underground, that will need to be a Scoping Study level assessment of the underground, and merging the two together for ASX reporting will bring it down to that lowest common denominator. Again, we will touch on that regional exploration where we have more rigs coming to site in November as we come out of the wet season. We are looking forward to a very exciting and aggressive dry season from this month through next July. Taking a look at the pit, some of the shifts, we had previously had a 1.3 million-ounce resource.
We have seen a lift in our pit. We have not really lost any ounces, a very small amount. We actually have probably another 80,000 oz that could be added to the resource from these gaps. The resource is wider than the tip of the pit through here. There is a bit more mining study work to understand how we could pull that in. We will bring in a little bit more high-grade material around the pit. The pit is a bit shallower in slope than we initially anticipated with ramp design. As we work towards the engineered pre-feasibility study work and a bit more detailed scheduling, we can see, we will have to run the ramp for about five, probably six passes down the pit wall because there is so much gold in such a small footprint here.
It is a fairly tight spiral, and each ramp is associated with quite a big horizontal step-out in the pit walls, which gives us an average slope of less than 50 degrees. On the underground, though we are seeing very competent rock, good geotechnical studies that we can hold long-hole open stopes. This is the lower end spectrum of costs that you can have for underground mining methods. Since we are in good competent ground, I think we have good development rates on single heading development of an underground. We have ourselves coming off of one of the ramps, probably the second ramp in the open pit. We would be able to outpace the pit with the development of the decline, and then we would have a secondary escape way getting established on the next ramp down. We would have a couple of exits off the pit.
More importantly is we would be underground and start mining the top portions of this before the open pit is complete. Probably about halfway into the mine life of the pit, we would start to see higher-grade material offset pitted tons, and we will see a bump in our gold per annum being produced. I will kind of hold comments on ounces per annum until we get the Scoping Study out to underpin. We are looking at, I think, a six-figure per ounce per year development scenario here. Diving in a little bit more detail on the metallurgy. We did have 74%-92% extraction. Effectively, we assigned six, well, eight different domains for leach tests.
Two domains in the oxide and transition, and then we have another zone that is probably predominantly transition, and then a clear five zones, spatial domains that are compositing all of the different materials across varying depths in the primary sulfide-bearing material. On a first pass, the average of those were between 80% and 85%. We have gone with 85% because we see a very encouraging outcome from lead nitrate additive as another reagent. This is actually a fairly commonly used additive in the leach process. I believe it is being used at Sanbrado, Kiaka, Syama, even the Yaouré deposit in Côte d'Ivoire, I believe, uses a little bit.
This is a material that helps mitigate the effect of sulfide in the leach, which, again, I think we should emphasize, we do not believe we are refractory in that the gold is encapsulated in our sulfide. We are not requiring a fine grind. One of the key points here is we are insensitive to grind size. We are actually looking at fairly low OpEx costs and low energy inputs with being able to go to a coarse grind. We are actually looking at 150 mesh at this point in time.
We will look at some finer grind scenarios, but finer grind actually gives us lower leach recoveries, and this is because you are exposing more sulfide surface area potentially. You are not liberating more gold. The grind size is very encouraging, mitigating the sulfide reacting with the cyanide and taking away that leach capability of the solution, I think is key. Leach cyanide, the lead nitrate will help coat some of those sulfide grains. It also helps to accelerate the leach process, which is another issue that we have seen that needs to be assessed. These key items planned is the lead nitrate dosage.
We have only done a single dosage. Too much can actually also reduce recovery, so that optimization needs to be correct. Once we have that, we will also start to look at some extended leach, because we are not seeing all of the gold come out in the 48-hour tests. It does not quite flatline. Recoveries will be higher with more time, or that could be mitigated with the lead nitrate helping to accelerate that. Also, to help mitigate the effects of sulfides in the leach, you can do some pre-oxidation, which is also a very common step in a simple CIL circuit. But we would not be assessing that until we have our lead nitrate dosage and reagent optimization correct. Then we start to look at the pre-oxidation test.
There are quite a few steps in here that each add several percentage of recovery benefit potentially, and we need to work through each of those. But we believe getting back to our predicted 90% or higher is achievable. But we will not come out with that until we have confidence in numbers to back it up, and a life-of-mine flow sheet optimization to go with it. We see upside benefit in the metallurgy. We do see some upside benefit in mining opportunities, again, with adding some ounces as we look further at our transition from underground to open pit. Probably the third thing where we see some significant upside, not only is going down dip, but also to the current depth, we are, I believe, down to about 940-meter vertical depth.
Forget the exact number, but we're at about 900 m vertical with our deepest hole, FNDC161, which returned 40 m at 3.9, within one of the widest intercepts of this mineralized intrusion that we've hit to date, being 110 m of true thickness, but still seeing a very good core of high grade to it, underground mineable. You can see in the ounces per vertical metre, we do, in the underground through here, after we get past the effects of our transition zone, we're seeing averaging plus 3,000 oz per vertical metre. This tail is because, you know, we're coming down to a single data point, and we know the mineralization's at depth, but we haven't really drilled the full strike extent of it. Again, this is 200 m of strike extent north-south, looking at this long section, looking to the west. We just, sorry, not advancing.
That section we're just looking at is this long section down the axis of the mineralized shear. This is our mineralized intrusion. That's the, in the pit, it gets up to about 95 m true width, and then thickens and appears to also be extending in length as we go down, along with increasing in grade beneath the pit floor. But at surface, a horizontal slice through that true thickness, this is about 140 m-wide mining width, 200 m extent of higher grade, and then beyond that point, we have another 800 m of mineralization, where it narrows up into the shear-hosted mineralization within the shear. I think still waiting on some results for open extensions here. Then, of course, we do know the mineralized shear extends throughout the 37 km of strike we have. Regionally, we're still at 600 to 2 km space drilling.
We're only about 14 months into our regional exploration program outside Ouarigue, and we've only just announced our first results on some 200 m infill, which has also returned some very encouraging numbers. So, we do see the resource growth potential. Again, those better intercepts, we had 9 m at 4 g per ton and three at 3.4, followed by another two at 12 on a 3 km offset to the south of our Ouarigue. So, starting to see some potential to build resources. When the rig comes in November, we'll be working north and filling this 2 km gap, where we see some interesting mag anomalies. Then, of course, we're very anxious, and we already have 12,000 m planned, and we believe we could be drilling within four to six weeks of this southern permit being granted.
So we'll be quite aggressive on this and prioritize the rigs and move straight onto it with grant of that permit. I think I've touched on all the growth features. Alex, anybody coming through with any questions?
Yeah, we had a few emailed, and please everybody type any questions you have into the dialog box and we'll get through them. There's one, I'll just sort of run in two parts. Actually, we've had a few people asking on the drop in the numbers between the 1.3 and 1.1 for the open pit, which I think you touched on, but maybe if you could expand on that. Then the other part to it is just there's the amount that's gone into measured and inferred, and is that why there's this comparison with Okvau?
Yeah. So again, touching on the reduction in the pit, yeah, we have probably seen a little bit of growth of ounces in the pit technically to the north, but that's offset by the lift of the pit floor. So again, we're lifting that bottom of pit about 150 m, and again, that's just optimization between the two. Previously, we were pulling a + 500 m pit floor in an RPEEE sense. There was a lot of high-grade material, so it was pulling an unusually high strip ratio, which I think if you compare that to underground costs, you're going to see higher margins in your mining from underground. So, for us, it always made sense, but in April, if we were to split those and had looked at an optimization between the two, it would have only been a couple hundred thousand ounces going into an underground.
So, now that we have something that is substantially viable for an underground development, we're now looking at the optimization between the two, and it's just clear-cut economics that you would not take such a high strip ratio and take those higher ounces in a higher margin mining method from underground.
Yeah.
Coming back to the Okvau comparison, I mean, the emphasis there is the conversion from resource to reserve. I think you had a similar story at Bonikro, which is probably our closest analogy in terms of geology and setting. Bonikro was also just a pipe of mineralized intrusive hosted. We're careful not to call it intrusion-related for geologists. It's not an IRGS type system. This is an orogenic shear-hosted system, and the shears happen to hit just the right scale and size of a competent rock to give you a good contrast, and the shears brittlely fractured this rock. The mineralization that we see, so I can jump to the photo, we're seeing just these kind of centimeter veins on a high density. So, you can see here we got six, eight of these little vein sets coming through here that are mineralized, and you're 5 g per ton.
Here it's 0.5 because, yeah, you only get a couple of very fine fractures. Then here you're seeing, you know, two, three per meter, and you're a gram, 2 g per ton. This is systematic throughout the entire true thickness of the intrusion. Yeah, brittlely fractured with the gold getting injected on these narrow veins. The upside to that is it's a lot of gold in a very small footprint. So, a typical sheared system in West Africa, these are more anastomosing or like pearls on a string, and the erratic distribution of the gold means it's difficult to pull deep pits. You end up getting a lot of internal dilution, and, you know, 3 or 4 million ounces can convert to a 2 million ounce resource. You see those 40%-60% conversion into reserves. For us, I think we will be closer to that 90% mark.
What we're, yeah, pulling into a pit outline here, as it's all very focused within this intrusion, and yeah, just a very good distribution of gold. We'll have that very high conversion rate to reserve, which I think made Emerald very successful. They were never really more than a million ounces, but yeah, really had a company creating mine off of a million ounce resource that converted to 900,000 ounces of reserve, and then still grew a little from there.
Great. Thanks, Travis. Got a few more questions come in. Yep. Please describe the potential scale of mineralization on surface in the mineralized intrusive area in the southern license, and please describe proposed exploration program once we have the final grant of the southern permit.
Back to, yeah, I guess the scale of the Ouarigue intrusion, this Ouarigue intrusion doesn't outcrop. It was found through just drilling and probably outlined better with some ground geophysics, which would be a tool that we would keep in our arsenal. Also, the intrusion is non-magnetic within some meta sediments that are otherwise magnetic. So yeah, a few geophysical tools. But they don't necessarily outcrop, and there could be more of what we call finger intrusions along this 20 km of strike. We have it Ferké South. But it's not the only thing that boosts volumes in these types of systems. More competent units within the sediments, sandstones, fold noses, flexures, which is what we're targeting with this higher-grade material that we see through here. This looks like a north-south flexure in the shear, which seems to create some dilation and more gold.
I think we will see more of those type of flexures, fold noses, and complexities along the main shear zone. When it comes to the intrusion, though, it is a good competent rock, and if it can shatter, we see the potential for that on this eastern target, where you get a splay of the mineralization. There is a lot of endowment here because this is a 1.5 km, it is actually 2 km extent of artisanal workings here where the miners are exploiting the 25 cm- 30 cm veins. Again, we do not see that at Ouarigue, so we do not have many artisanals, plus this is a bit masked. Do not know if the artisanals would have found it. Here, there is still a lot of the centimeter veins that I point out at Ouarigue.
When you walk through and you see outcrops or the rocks that are discarded outside of these artisanal developments, they chuck that material aside. Again, where there is just two or three of those centimeter veins per meter, this can be gram per ton rock that is not of interest to the artisanals. If we link up some high-density zones between these bigger 30 cm, 50 cm veins that are probably running 10 g- 50 g per ton that these artisanals are interested in, there is good potential here to quickly build bulk tonnage ounces in a high vein density zone. This is a 2 km by 4 km target, and that is one of our priorities. Yeah, as soon as this is granted, we want to get a long fence of RC across this for a systematic test looking for stronger vein density within that anomaly.
This is also a key contact. This is a bit more of a BBM-type setting, where a wall is drilling mineralization at a contact between the sediments and the granites, and you get a change of orientation in the structure. Here, we are seeing that flexure and change of orientation as the structure truncates the granite material here, and we get 4 km of high-grade artisanal workings, again, on small veins, but good potential for bulk tonnage ounces through here. Then, of course, where all of these come back and intersect, yeah, are very exciting targets on the main shear that we want to follow up. One of the highest target density permits I have been involved with in West Africa. Yeah, excited to drill.
Hmm. That kind of segues into another question, which is, what is Travis’s favorite regional target at Ferké or Ferké South? Not that you guys have favorites, but
It would have to be, yeah, Ferké South and, yeah, barring getting infilling this 9 km-long gap in the soils through here to see other structural intersections, yeah, I would have to rate equally these three. Newmont only drilled to about 60 m depth here. They left a couple of holes bottoming in mineralization, some 6 m at 2.2, and they still left a 400 ppb soil anomaly untested for another 1.2 km south of this. Yeah, really interested in the kind of 3 km-long high-grade geochem anomaly there that is only partially tested on wide spacing to shallow depths. And yeah, then, of course, these intrusion-hosted targets on the splays to the east are, well, all rate equally. We would love to put a rig on each of them and let the rigs race, see who gets the most meters.
Hmm. Sounds good. Just going back to Ouarigue, a question on what is the position with competency of ground condition as you go deeper in the underground?
Yeah. Again, we are in this intrusion and at depth, even in our deeper FNDC161, I mean, this is coming out in rolling pins. You can see we are seeing full meter pieces. Yeah, I suppose this would actually be an example of our more broken ground. Yeah, if we get kind of three or four natural fractures per meter, that would be some of our weakest ground. But for the most part, yeah, we have to break this core to get it in the trays. When you are within the intrusion, at the margins, of course, I do not have a photo here, but yeah, there is the shear that hits this intrusion and then partitions around it. We do see high foliation along the margins, but it is on the scale of kind of one to three meter of high foliation to kind of sheared material.
But still, it is a very competent rock. It has been silicified and hornfelsed, and yeah, we just do not see it as a weak ground, even on the margins. So yeah, for me, it is good competent rock to keep overhead for overhand stoping methods.
Great. Thanks, Travis. Just another question on if you can give a bit of a line of sight on the timing for the studies, and is it too early to guide on when the next resource update may be, even though we've just had one?
Yeah. I would like to be doing a resource update in probably seven to eight months' time. We've never stopped drilling, and it would be good to update this. We've probably got another four pierce points at depth drilled, which are currently being logged and hopefully shipped to the lab very soon. I got two rigs running on the deeper drilling. Yeah, but basically, these are 200 m jumps. I want to do 100 m vertical panels on 50 m spacing, so about five holes every 100 m depth. I speculate it is going to take us another five to six months to drill that. I think that is going to add. Again, based on that 300,000-ounce assumption, we could build this into a proper exploration target under JORC quite easily, as we have the grade here.
Based on your ounces per vertical metre, if you fill in this tail at that similar level, down to this minus 648, that is 280,000 oz. We do see higher grade thickness intercepts at depth, though, so we could start to peek our head above 3,000 OVM . So, I do see a 300,000 oz addition here in the process of converting this from inferred to indicated. Of course, at 3,000 OVM , there is still scope to go another 100 m- 300 m deeper. So, I think with time, this starts to build into a + 2.5 million ounce type target for us now. Yeah, we will look to get this towards a 2 million ounce mineable by the end of next year, and that would be underpinned in a feasibility study.
The resource that would underpin that, yeah, we would love to get that out in the next seven to eight months, again, on the back of completing that drilling in the next six to seven, then give us a couple of months to get results and work it up. Yeah, that would then feed directly into the feasibility study that we expect to run through 2027, which would be concurrent with our application for mining permit. Again, another reason we are really pushing to downgrade this to a Scoping Study is this underground gives us more mine life. We will be using this study to underpin an application for mining permit early 2027. So, we have that process running concurrent with the feasibility study work, to position ourselves for that FID early 2028. Sorry, I was trying to track my train of thought there.
Yeah, adding the ounces all feeds into the feasibility study at the same time. The point was, a longer mine life. Côte d'Ivoire issues the mining permits based on that study. If we had a 10-year mine life, you would get a 10-year mining permit. With this underground incorporated, we can extend that to a 12 or 14-year mine life in the study. It gives you a 14-year mining permit. There are some advantages to it as well, logistically, in terms of development going forward and mine life on a permit.
One more question just came in, Travis. We will probably have to wrap it up after that.
Yep.
Are you hitting much groundwater in the deeper holes at Ferké?
There is water there from about 200 m, but yeah, we actually struggle to have water for drilling. The recharge is very low. I do not think it can be a source of water per se, and the expectation is, yeah, that drawing down a cone and dewatering is going to be fairly simple. But yeah, we do not make a lot of water. Actually, the holes make no water. We only recirculate. You do hit water from about 80 m depth, but yeah, the recharge and movement of water, even within the structure, is very low. But yeah, I cannot really comment towards what it will take to draw down a cone. Those tests are upcoming early 2027. We have monitoring wells in place already for environmental work. But yeah, more formal kind of dewatering tests are on the schedule for next year.
But yeah, very encouraging based on what we see in the drilling.
Right. All right, we will probably wrap it up there. So, thanks so much, Travis, for your time presenting today. Thanks for everyone who dialed in and listened, and for posing questions as well. Congrats, Travis, to you and the whole team on such an outstanding result and all the continued work, and we look forward to following progress –
Yep.
–through what sounds like a very exciting 2027.
Yep, and I will just take. Thank you for all of our shareholders and anybody just for their interest in Many Peaks. Yeah, and yeah, please do not hesitate to reach out on info@manypeaks.com.au. Myself and Matt both monitor that, and yeah, do not hesitate with any further questions.
Right. Thank you. Thanks, everybody.