Burkina Faso's First Gold Refinery Goes into Operation with an Annual Capacity of 164 Tonnes

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On September 28, Burkina Faso's President Ibrahim Traoré inaugurated the RAFFINOR-BF national gold refinery in the capital Ouagadougou, marking the plant's official entry into operation. The project is located in District 12 of Ouagadougou, covers an area of 5 hectares, and involves a total investment of 11 billion CFA francs, funded mainly by Burkina Faso's national precious metals company SONASP and private partners.

The plant is equipped with a smelting workshop, an analytical laboratory, a gold storage area, a jewelry processing unit, and administrative facilities, and adopts closed automated refining equipment. The project was built in a modular manner. The theoretical gold refining capacity of Phase I is 164 tonnes per year, and Phase II is planned to expand the capacity to 515 tonnes per year.

RAFFINOR-BF mainly processes doré bullion produced by mines, which after refining can be made into refined gold bars with a purity of 99.99%. The plant also has gold testing, storage, and product processing capabilities. On the day the project was put into operation, the first batch of gold bar refining production was already carried out at the plant.

Construction of the project began in November 2023, and it entered the official operation stage in September 2026. The Burkina Faso government plans to channel more gold produced by domestic mines into the local refining system, with RAFFINOR-BF responsible for refining, testing, and certification, among other processes.