Ampella to get jump on African assays
DIGGERS AND DEALERS: The lag time for drill results in Africa has been a common complaint suffered by companies operating on the continent.
Ampella Mining has taken the matter to task and has announced a sample preparation laboratory based at the company’s 100 per cent-owned Batie West gold project in Burkina Faso has now been commissioned and is fully operational.
Location diagram of Ampella Mining’s Batie West project in Burkina Faso. Source: Company announcement
Ampella decided to bite the bullet in 2011 to construct its own sample preparation lab to combat the long delays occurring in the Burkina Faso laboratories.
Being able to prepare samples ready for assay in its own facility will alleviate the turnaround times from the Burkina labs and will also provide Ampella the flexibility to send the samples overseas for assay if necessary.
“The driver for us putting our own lab on site was the fact that we could see that the West African labs were all snowed under as there are a lot of exploration companies all moving into West Africa, particularly in the two years and the labs just couldn’t cope,” Ampella Mining managing director and CEO told The Roadhouse at Diggers and Dealers.
“The main reason they can’t copies that they don’t have enough prep facilities.
“So we decided late last year that we would build our own prep lab onsite.”
The company said it considered maintaining its own strict QA/QC procedures was an imperative and that it has retained independent contractor, SGS, to operate the lab to maintain independence of results from all drill programs.
“We can do about 8,000 samples per month and we believe that gives us enough edge to be able to get a quicker turnaround,” Kitto said.
“We are expecting a turnaround on samples now of around two weeks as opposed to six months.”
The timing of commissioning is advantageous for the company with the African wet season now in full swing, resulting in its drilling programs slowing accordingly.
This will allow the new lab to concentrate on clearing the previous backlog of 46,000 samples awaiting assay.
A number of these samples have been with assay labs in Ouagadougou for over six months and the commissioning of the Batie West lab will enable Ampella to systematically recall unprepped samples to site thereby reducing the turnaround time for gold assay
The company said between the Batie West lab and the existing facilities in Ouagadougou, the backlog of 46,000 samples will be cleared for assay by the end of October.
Even after this backlog has been cleared Kitto said there would be plenty more to take their place.
“I think we will keep it flat out and we will probably still have to send samples elsewhere, but the key samples can go through our lab, and that’s been the issue.
“Trying to explore without results, particularly when results take six months to come back, is like having both arms cut off.”