[miningmx.com] — RANDGOLD Resources and Anglogold Ashanti’s Kibali joint venture in northeastern Congo will be fully operational by the beginning of 2014, Randgold’s chief executive said on Monday.
The date is slightly later than a previous target of mid-2013 but Mark Bristow said that progress was proceeding well and the firm had successfully moved the first village as part of its large-scale relocation plan.
Total mineral reserves are currently estimated at more than 10 million ounces of gold with total mineral resources at 18.45 million. Annual gold output in the early years of operations is estimated at around 400,000 ounces a year.
“The target is that we have everything running going into 2014,” Bristow told Reuters, adding that a detailed startup timetable would be given later in the year.
The Kibali project is potentially one of Africa’s largest gold mines and Bristow said a processing plant with a 4 to 6 million tonne-a-year capacity will be installed.
Bristow said the process of relocating the first of an estimated 15,000 people for the mine had successfully begun. “We have just cleared the first village,” he said on the sidelines of a mining conference in Kinshasa.
A specially designed and built model town has been established as a new home for the residents of the 14 affected villages in Orientale province, the company says on its website.
Randgold and Anglogold Ashanti both have a 45% share in the project while Congolese state enterprise OKIMO, Office des Mines d’Or de Kilo-Moto, holds the remaining 10%.
Randgold Resources was one of a handful of FTSE 100 gainers on Monday, a rise traders said followed bullish comments on gold from Morgan Stanley in a mining sector review.
