Sukari, Egypt

Overview and locality

The Sukari mine tenement covers an area of 160km² about 750km southeast of Cairo and 25km from Marsa Alam on the Red Sea. It lies in Egypt’s mineral-rich Eastern Desert that is located within the Egyptian Nubian Shield. Mining operations began in 2009 and commercial production in April 2010.

In addition to an open pit and underground mine, the mine site houses a processing plant, thermal power generation facilities, a 36 MW solar plant and associated infrastructure. Three pipelines and related pumping stations transport seawater from the Red Sea to the mine site for process plant and mining requirements and an access road links the mine to Marsa Alam.

Gold is recovered by means of carbon-in-leach (CIL) processing with sulphide flotation as the core process. Current plant capacity is 12.6Mtpa.

In 2023, prior to its acquisition by AngloGold Ashanti, the mine produced 450,058oz of gold at an average grade of 1.27g/t and a metallurgical recovery of 88.7%.

Brief history

• Gold has been mined at Sukari since the Pharaonic and Roman times
• Small-scale mining resumed between 1912 and 1914 with more substantial underground mining in the years from 1937 to 1951. Mining activity halted in 1958.
• First systematic modern exploration in the Sukari area was conducted in the 1970s by the Egyptian Government with assistance from the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Five diamond drillholes confirmed the presence of gold mineralisation at depth
• The Sukari deposit was discovered in the 1990s. Title, exploitation and development rights to the Sukari Project were granted in 1995 in terms of a concession agreement between PGM, the company which owned the then Sukari project, the Egyptian Mineral Resource Authority (EMRA) and the Government of Egypt. Exploration began that same year and drilling in 1997
• Centamin acquired PGM in 1999. A feasibility study, submitted in 2000 and accepted by the EMRA in 2001, demonstrated the existence of a “commercial discovery” at Sukari
• An exploitation lease was granted in 2005 by the Egyptian Minister of Petroleum. The lease covered an area of 160km² and included the planned Sukari mine site and surrounding prospects. PGM and EMRA established an operating company, Sukari Gold Mine, incorporated under Egyptian laws on 13 April 2006, to conduct exploration, development, exploitation and marketing operations. Modern mining operations began in 2009 and commercial production was achieved in April 2010
• Since commissioning, capacity of the processing plant has been more than tripled. The initial crushing, milling and CIL circuits were designed to process oxide ore at a rate of 4Mtpa. The circuit was subsequently expanded to process a 5Mtpa blend of oxide and sulphide ores. A second crushing, milling and flotation circuit was added in 2012. Since then, additional smaller circuit modifications to debottleneck the plant and the addition of a second Zadra elution circuit as well as a second carbon regeneration kiln enable the processing circuit to operate at a nominal throughput rate of 12.6Mtpa
• AngloGold Ashanti acquired Centamin and its interest in Sukari in November 2024

For further information

• 2023 Sukari NI43-101 Technical Report PDF, 14MB
• 2015 Sukari NI43-101 Technical Report PDF, 8MB