MINING NEWS
Randgold ’ s secret for Congo mining : Fly people in , gold bars out
Randgold Resources had to haul heavy equipment more than 1 000 miles to build the roads and hydropower plants needed to construct its Kibali gold mine , the biggest in Democratic Republic of Congo . �e sprawling facility in a remote corner of a country the size of Western Europe is a hight e c h o p e r at i o n . I n o n e t u n n e l d e e p underground , a $ 1.3 million , 68-metric-ton remote-controlled digger heaves ore out of a cavernous blast hole . �e ventilation system hums as 50-ton loads are slowly humped along the 3-kilometer track back to the surface . �e best-performing gold miner of the past decade , Randgold has built its success on getting complicated projects like Kibali into production on time and within budget . It ' s the third major mine the company has brought on stream in ve years , and it has indeed been a gold mine : It accounts for about a �h of the company ' s production , which tripled between 2010 and 2015 as revenue doubled to more than $ 1 billion . Now , with Kibali nearing full production and no new discoveries since 2011 , the miner needs to nd guaranteed output growth to impress investors wary of the shrinking pool of largescale deposits . “ �ey ' ve done this a long time and they know they need to re-shine the halo ,” said Clive Burstow , who helps manage about $ 475 million of natural-resource assets at London ' s Baring Asset Management including Randgold shares . “ I certainly wouldn ' t bet against them nding something , but don ' t forget it ' s getting harder to nd these big elephant-sized deposits they talk about .”
Dinner Plates �e key to making Kibali work : �e company and its partners built everything in sight , including housing for more than 4 000 resettled families and an international airport where personnel y in and gold bars y out . At the high point of construction , Kibali received as many as 400 40-foot containers a week across the border from Uganda . Everything from the plates and cutlery in the large canteen to a plant that processes as much as 7 million tons of ore a year has been driven in across more than 1 120 miles of road from either Mombasa , Kenya , or Dar es Salaam , Tanzania . �ree hydropower projects will ultimately provide 42 megawatts of electricity to the mine . One of the company ' s new mines will be in Senegal , according to Randgold CEO Mark Bristow , who has promised the company , which is also exploring in Ivory Coast , will de ne three new projects in the next ve years . Another may be in Congo , in an area next to Kibali : �e Moku-Beverendi gold project , a joint venture with Moku Goldmines AG controlled by Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler . We are looking for “ world class 10-plusmillion-ounce deposits ,” Bristow said in Cape Town in February . “ We think Moku has that potential .”
Four Ventures Moku is one of four joint ventures Randgold has signed in Congo in the past 18 months as it looks to replicate Kibali ' s success . A partnership between Randgold , AngloGold Ashanti Ltd . and state-owned Sokimo , Kibali shipped 642 720 ounces of gold worth more than $ 700 million in 2015 . �at helped increase production of the precious metal in the country from almost nothing in 2011 to more than 25 tons a year . Production last year fell to 585 946 ounces a�er
Page10 | Jan - Feb 2016
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