Cora Gold (AIM:COR) have appointed contractors for their prospective gold project at Sanankoro in Southern Mali. London South East interviewed Bert Monro the CEO on the morning of the announcement.

Bert is thrilled to have appointed three firms with extensive West Africa experience to carry out the Definitive Feasibility Study work - a sign in itself that things are going well with the project.

The second interesting signal is that Cora have opted for gravity/carbon in leach (CIL) processing over heap leach. Bert explained at length to us how this works. "CIL is initially more capital intensive than heap leach, but recovers up to 90% of gold, whereas heap leach is attractive for smaller projects because you can get into production quite quickly and cheaply. The downside is you generally only get 65% recovery of your gold. So if you are anticipating having a larger deposit and a longer mine life by switching to gravity CIL recover you can get into the 90%+ recovery of gold. We are in ongoing discussions with Lionhead to align their term sheet with the new plan".

The plan is to massively expand the gold resources there and Cora are currently engaged in their largest ever drilling campaign at Sanankoro, 35,000 meters of drilling with an updated Mineral Resource to follow in Q4 2021.

"What we have seen in the last few months have been some really fantastic drill results with some amazing grades and widths coming through" said Bert. "So our expectation is that should keep coming through positively in the coming weeks and months. We have only delivered half our assay results so lots to go there yet."

"The DFS is the bankable study, it's a study which enables you to finance the project and to then go out and build it, it's the significant study you are working towards. We are looking to complete it in the first part of next year."