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REGIONAL NEWS - AFRICA In mid-May, African Barrick reported it had concluded discussions with the Tanzanian government with respect to the level of royalty payments made by its operations and, in light of the cur- rent gold price environment, agreed to a voluntary additional 1% royalty going forward. This is in addition to the 3% rate stipulated in the company's miner- al development agreements, which remain unchanged. Avion Temporarily Suspends Mali Mill Expansion Project Avion Gold announced on May 8, 2012, that the mill expansion project at it Tabakoto & Segala operations in Mali had been temporarily suspended due to business disruptions associated with the military coup in that nation. The project, designed to lift mill throughput from 2,000 to 4,000 mt/d, was 80% complete. Mining and milling operations were continuing at the exist- ing mill. Suspension of the expansion project was a direct result of some of Avion's contractors demobilizing back to their home bases due to foreign gov- ernment travel warnings for Mali, as well as a slowdown of construction supplies moving through customs at Mali's borders. The foreign government travel warn- ings were mostly applicable to the northern half of the country. "Avion has taken and is taking prudent precau- tions to ensure the safety and welfare of its employees at site, which is locat- ed approximately 350 km from the capital of Bamako and more 1,000 km from the insurgency in the northern part of Mali," Avion COO Andrew Bradfield said. "It is disappointing to have to tem- porarily halt the mill expansion so close to completion. However, without some of the contactors and upgrade supplies on site, we had no choice but to put the project on standby. The suspension of the expansion plans will affect Avion's planned production growth. However, regular supplies and fuel shipments continue to arrive at site, a large amount of consumable inventory exists at the mine, our 2,000-mt/d mill con- tinues to run well, and we are still pro- COMPANY PROFILE-PAID ADVERTISEMENT Off Highway Haul Truck Engineering Services Pioneer Solutions, LLC 24800 Rockwell Drive Cleveland, OH 44117-1203 216-383-3400 www.pioneersolutionsllc.com Pioneer Solutions, LLC was formed in September 2004 and primarily consists of the former Euclid-Hitachi off highway haul truck engineering department, at the time when Hitachi Construction Machinery dis- continued their construction and mining truck operations in the United States. This new company has been able to retain senior level engineers with decades of experience, and attract additional skilled engineering personnel to provide a high level of technical expertise for the complete product life cycle directly related to off highway equipment. 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Base case evaluation calls for owner mining of 12 million mt/y of ore from a single open pit in the Kiaka Central area at a strip ratio of 2.95:1. Processing would be through two paral- lel, 6-million-mt/y lines, each com- prising a SAG mill, ball mill, and car- bon-in-pulp leach circuit, with an aver- age metallurgical recovery of 89.84%. Annual production is estimated at 340,000 oz/y of gold over a mine life of