Mr. Wang Jianhua, the chairman, Ms. Lydia Yang, the director and president of Chifeng Gold, had conducted an inspection tour to Golden Star Wassa mine, a subsidiary of Chifeng Gold in Ghana  from October 28th to 29th.  During the tour, the delegation was  accompanied by Mr. Kevin Chen, the executive chairman, Carl Baker- Duly, the CEO of Wassa mine among other executives,  the head of department and technical expert.

Upon the arrival on the mine site, the delegation was firstly greeted and updated by Wassa management on the status of mine production, operational excellence, mining optimization and exploration programs for Wassa mine in 2024.

In the presentation session, Edmund Thorne, the newly appointed Chief Operation Officer of Wassa mine, made a  detailed update on the safety and environmental performance,  the community relation, the status of production, the plans and scheduling on the operation optimization and TSF expansion,  the forecast of 2024 Q4 production, the budget preparation and geological exploration programs in 2025. He also reported the initiatives, studies and progress on  improving the mobile plant availability and productivity,  accelerating  the rate and  advance meter of mine development, increasing the level intervals, enhancing the supervision of underground operational activity. The finance, supply chain, and geological department also reported the update and plans on improving the  financial performance, establishing the robust procurement system, optimizing the underground and surface exploration programs respectively.  

On October 29th, Mr. Wang Jianhua and the delegates went to underground to inspect the development in B shoot main , the decline in 242 area before proceeding to  DMH open pit operation.  Edmund Thorne briefed Mr. Wang Jianhua on site the ideas and progress on   improving the road condition, reenforcing the  ground support, optimizing  paste filling, enhancing the dewatering system. Mr. Wang Jianhua commented that although it has only been a few months since his last visit to Wassa, great changes have been taken  place in the areas of road condition, drainage, and group support. He added that Wassa team's ideas on optimizing the mining design parameter, improving the operational efficiency and the costs control was proved correct and he looked forward to the desired effects brought out by the  successfully  execution of these initiatives.

Following the site inspection, the chairman, Mr. Wang Jianhua and the president Ms. Lydia Yang held in-depth discussion and communication with the core management of Wassa mine on the key issues including the contractor management, the global  sourcing and procurement of major consumables and equipment, the geological exploration to expand the mineral resource basis, the continuous optimization of mine operation  and the strategy of  development.

President Lydia Yang appreciated the improvement and achievement delivered by Wassa team under the leadership of CEO, Carl and hoped that  Wassa mine would continue to tap the potentials for cost reduction and even higher efficiency, constantly improve the operational excellence with focus on the expansion and efficiency. Ms. Lydia Yang also stressed that Waasa mine should establish a highly systematic and robust data system by exploring the feasibility of integrating a unified data network system with the other mines of  Chifeng Gold group and balancing the security and convenience of data acquisition and access. Wassa team was expected  to fully leverage the group’s global procurement platform to realize the global procurement of major consumables and equipment by collaborating with Shanghai global procurement team to create a systematic global procurement mechanism with clear accountability and maximum benefit and effectiveness. The procurement team should actively source and select the vendors based on the metrics such as the efficiency, performance and the quality of service to promote a healthy competence and continuously capabilities building.

Mr. Wang Jianhua stated that at present the Wassa management team should  stick  to the overarching principle of keeping increasing mining rate and plant throughput by deeply tapping the potentials of optimizing mining design and processing parameters to achieve the operational excellence. The mine has to expand and upgrade the mineral resource and reserve within and in the adjacent to the existing mining leases through the sophisticated design and aggressive implementation of geological programs to sustain its long-term development. The Wassa management should adopt the asset-light strategy by strengthening the outsourcing and the contractor management, broadening horizon to create a new era for the development of the Wassa mine

Both the chairman, Mr. Wang Jianhua and the president, Madame Lydia Yang  showed confidence to Wassa management and looked forward to the delivery of best operational performance in the last quarter of 2024. They firmly believe that Wassa mine can become a world-class mine by the efforts of all  employees.