Mana grows for Semafo

The economics of the Mana Mine in Burkina Faso continue to improve for Semafo (SMF-T).

The company announced more encouraging results from the project and said it will delay an anticipated feasibility study on an underground mine so that mineralization from a new zone can be included.

That new zone is known as Wona Southwest, or Wona SW, and the latest results show the company to be justified in holding up feasibility until the first quarter of next year.

Highlight intercepts from Wona SW include 10.2 metres grading 3.58 grams gold, 14 metres grading 3.9 grams gold and 12.9 metres grading 3.46 grams gold.

Wona SW lies immediately southwest and parallel to the Wona Main Deep Zone where the company recently finished a pre-feasibility study.

Semafo says Wona SW appears to be continuously mineralized over a strike-length of at least 800 meters and appears to join the Main Zone which would make for a combined strike-length of 1.5 kilometers of continuous gold mineralization.

New results were also released from the Wona Main zone and they were even more impressive than results from Wona SW. Assays were highlighted by 60.3 metres grading 3.34 grams told, 74 metres grading 3.16 grams gold, 64 metres grading 2.77 grams gold and 44 metres grading 4.53 grams gold. All of those results came from separate holes.

Also boding well for the future growth of the project is the fact that new higher grade parallel structures were crossed throughout southwest area.

While the company plans to do infill drilling there to get a more accurate interpretation but right now Semafo is saying that the structures are more discontinuous in nature compared to the Wona Main and SW Zones.

The Parallel Zones adjacent to Wona SW returned highlight intercepts of 16.1 metres grading 3.74 grams gold, 7.8 metres grading 4.02 grams gold and 8 metres grading 6.86 grams gold.

As part of its 2010 exploration program at Mana, Semafo has thus far drilled 35 holes for 16,928 metres.

With the extra time generated by delaying the feasibility study Semafo plans to do infill drilling at Wona SW, as well as at-depth drilling on the center and south of the Wona Main pit.

It will also do infill drilling on the Kona zone to test for open pit potential.

“We are confident that by deferring the feasibility study results in order to incorporate these new findings, we will substantially expand the magnitude of the underground project and once again increase the project’s cash flow and internal rate of return.” Benoit Desormeaux, Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer said in a statement.
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Semafo has two other mines outside of Mana in operation: the Samira Hill Mine in Niger and the Kiniero Mine in Guinea.

In Toronto on July 8 the company’s shares were off 13¢ to $7.20 on 2.5 million shares traded.