ENDEAVOUR Mining said it had completed the upgrade of a carbon-in-leach (CIL) plant at its Ity mine in Côte d’Ivoire taking capacity to five million tons a year from four million tons previously.
This followed the commissioning of Ity CIL in April. The upgrade was completed at a cost of no more than $15m. “With the plant upsize now complete, we are well positioned for 2020 and beyond,” said Sébastien de Montessus, president and CEO of Endeavour Mining.
“We believe the increased plant capacity will help accelerate the value created through exploration,” he said.
The company also said it had been given ownership of the Mahapleu tenement which would result in Endeavour “… now controlling the entire Birimian greenstone trend that stretches 125km along the Ity mine”.
Said Patrick Bouisset, executive vice president for exploration and growth at Endeavour: “With our primary exploration objective of extending mine lives beyond 10 years for both Houndé and Ity well on track, we can now focus on increasing our greenfield exploration efforts in Côte d’Ivoire with Mahapleu ranking high within our large greenfield portfolio, alongside Fetekro”.
The commissioning of Ity earlier this year proved catalytic to Endeavour which reported cash flow positive numbers for the third quarter.
Operating cash flow before non-cash working capital doubled to $115m, equal to $1.05/share quarter-on-quarter. Free cash flow before debt and lease repayments came in at $52m for the period.
As a result, net debt was reduced $52m to $608m or 1.9x adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) – a ratio improved from the 2.8x position in the previous quarter and in touching distance (at the current margin) to Endeavour’s 1.5x net debt to EBITDA target.
