Centre Pit

 mine, open-pit mine, gold mine

This is the Centre Pit which mines the Fekola-Centre deposit and over the life of mine average production will be 250,000 ounces per year with an operating cash cost of US$552 per ounce.
The ultimate pit will be 320 m deep, 1.9 km long, 750 m wide. The development will occur in a sequence of seven 150 to 250 m wide and 500 to 750 m long stages. The cutbacks need to be accessed through temporary ramps in the initial stage of development from the surface. The majority of these temporary ramps will be mined after acting as catch berms between the successive cutbacks mined at different levels. The remaining rampson the final pit walls will act as geotechnical berms (i.e. wider berms to limit the inter-ramp slope to form a stacked slope design.

A nominal ramp and road width of 25 m, including drainage and safety windrow, is used for dual lane truck operation. Ramp widths are reduced to 15 m in mining the lower levels of the Stage 6 and 7 cutbacks developing the final pit walls. Passing bays are provided at approximately 200 m intervals for the single lane section of the ramps. A ramp gradient of up to 1n 9 (11%) is used for both single and dual lane ramps. The pit utilizes conventional open pit mining and has 9.5 life of mine to reach the 320 m depth.

During the pre-stripping period 16 haul trucks will be used then that will increase to 34 as the haul distances increase with the deepening of the mined cutbacks. The excavator numbers will peak in the ramp up period early in the production schedule with addition of six trucks to the initial fleet at the start of mining in Stage 2. The three PC2000 (or similar) shovels will work on 10m high waste mining benches. The two PC1250 (or similar) backhoes will be mainly used to mine ore selectively and to mine difficult areas. The ancillary equipment numbers will peak at the end of second year of the schedule as the mining in the three cutbacks and waste dumping faces advance.