The Sao Francisco mine is an open-pit operation that is designed to send a steady feed of CGO to the gravity circuit while DLO is stock piled until the end of the mine life, when there will be capacity in the plant to crush it and improve the heap leach gold recovery. The improved gold price, the economies of scale achieved by the increased crushing plant throughput, and the enhanced recovery of CGO versus DLO, allows the economical processing of crushing-gravity material with ore grades as low as 0.28 g/t gold. In 2009, the Sao Francisco mine processed 6,524,678 tonnes of ore during the year, with gold production totalling 82,665 ounces. Gold production in 2010 was 61,770 ounces and 2011 production is targeted to be between 55,000 and 60,000 ounces, despite the first quarter being dedicated only to waste stripping.