Sounkounkou, Heremakono and Sabodala Licences
AXMIN entered into a joint venture (“JV”) agreement on November 3, 2008 with Sabodala Mining Company SARL, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Teranga Gold Corporation (“Teranga”), formerly Mineral Deposits Limited. The JV covers AXMIN’s wholly-owned gold exploration permits, Sonkounkou, Heremakono and Sabodala NW (“Senegal Permits”) located in the Birimian belt of Eastern Senegal. 

In November, 2010, Teranga earned a 51% interest in the Senegal licences, at that time AXMIN elected not to participate in further expenditure on a pro-rata basis and thus, once Teranga has spent a further $3.5 million, AXMIN’s interest in the licence will be diluted to 20%.

On June 13, 2011, AXMIN’s joint venture partner Teranga Gold Corporation (“Teranga”), formerly Mineral Developments Limited (“MDL”) announced additional encouraging results from both the Gora deposit and several new zones, two of which are located on AXMIN’s Senegal licences. Teranga announces that it is advancing the Gora Project towards production as early as late 2012 with high-grade drill intersections continuing to expand the potential footprint of the deposit. In order to develop Gora as quickly as possible, the on-going exploration program, permitting, equipment selection and a pre-feasibility level economic analysis programs are running in parallel.

In May 2011, Teranga announced an initial inferred resource at the Gora high-grade deposit located on AXMIN’s Sounkounkou permit. Teranga has identified an inferred resource of 106,000 contained ounces of gold (543,000 tonnes at 6.0 g/t Au) and that the deposit remains open in all directions.