The Tasiast mine is one of the largest open pit gold mines in Africa, located in the remote north western region of Inchiri in Mauritiana.

As an off-grid mine it needed to have its own power supply and was being powered by a 25 MW HFO Wartsila power plant, with an additional 10 MW of diesel, both of which Kinross own.

The diesel technology was ageing, very inefficient and prone to regular breakdowns, which was incurring Kinross huge maintenance costs. Furthermore, they had recently completed phase one of an expansion of the mine. This included the installation of a new SAG mill to increase the rock crushing capacity by 50% - from 8,000 tonnes of rock crushed per day to 12,000 tonnes of rock crushed per day – however the power generation capacity had not been upgraded. This meant the redundancy available on site was significantly decreased once the mine expanded and heightened the risk of power failures - potentially causing production to stop.

The life expectancy of the mine was expected to be another decade away in 2029, and with the diesel price volatility impacted them, Kinross needed to think about power for the mine longer term, as well as what they could do to alleviate the cost implications they were suffering short term.

They called Aggreko to explore their options.