Endeavour Mining Corporation announced that the first gold pour from the Ity CIL project in Côte d'Ivoire took place on March 18, 2019, ahead of schedule and under-budget. The first pour yielded approximately 1,800 ounces of gold. Approximately 135,160 tonnes of ore have been processed since ore was introduced into the CIL processing plant on February 20, 2019. Commercial production is expected to be declared in early Q2-2019 with performance trial testing soon to commence, as the crushing, milling and CIL circuits have quickly attained a stable nameplate capacity of 4 million tonnes per annum ("Mtpa"). Ity is expected to produce 160-200koz in 2019 at an AISC of $525-590/oz.

Following the performance tests already conducted, Endeavour launched optimization and de-bottlenecking work which is expected to increase the plant nameplate capacity by 1Mtpa to 5Mtpa, at a minimal cost of $10-15 million. The volumetric upsize work mainly comprises an upgrade in pipes and pumps, and a second 50-tonne oxygen plant with no additional mining fleet required. These plant upgrades are expected to be completed during scheduled plant maintenance shut-downs throughout the next six months. An $11 million exploration program totaling approximately 71,000 meters of drilling has been planned for 2019, noted the company.

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