Perseus fires first underground blast at Côte d'Ivoire's Yaouré mine

The CMA Underground project is the country's first mechanised underground gold mine and Perseus's first anywhere

RMRoy Mulenga

28 April 20262 min read

Perseus Mining fired the first underground production blast at its CMA Underground project, beneath the existing Yaouré open pit in Côte d'Ivoire, on 28 April 2026, from the Blika 1120 ore drive south. The milestone marks the start of stope production at what is both the first mechanised underground gold mine in Côte d'Ivoire and the first underground mine Perseus has ever operated.

Chasing higher grades underground

The underground ore body at Yaouré grades around 6.6 grams per tonne, markedly richer than the material Perseus has historically mined from the open pit, and is expected to supplement mill feed as the operation transitions toward steady-state underground production targeted for the third quarter of Perseus's 2027 financial year. The company is investing $170 million in the underground development, which received presidential approval in September 2025 and reached first ore in January 2026 before this month's first production blast.

Why it matters

Yaouré has been one of Perseus's core assets since it entered production in 2020, and adding an underground operation extends the mine's productive life by drawing on higher-grade material that was uneconomic to access from surface. Perseus expects Yaouré, combining open pit and underground output, to contribute roughly a third of the company's total gold production over the next decade, making the underground ramp-up an important swing factor for group output as Perseus's other mines mature.

What happens next

The project now moves through a period of building up stope numbers and mining rates toward the steady-state target in mid-2027. Because underground mines typically take longer than open pits to reach full productivity, the pace at which Perseus can add producing stopes will be the key indicator of whether the higher-grade ore materially lifts group-wide output on schedule.