JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Aim-quoted Alecto Minerals on Monday announced plans to buy 100% of Gazelle Resources, which owned the Burkina Faso-based Kerboulé gold project, from Kaizen Discovery.

Alecto agreed to pay Kaizen an initial £350 000 through the issue of 54.99-million new ordinary Alecto shares.

At the sole discretion of Alecto, a deferred consideration of $1.5-million would become payable in either shares or cash upon the achievement of either a Joint Ore Reserves Committee- (Jorc-) compliant inferred resource of one-million ounces of gold at a minimum cutoff of 0.5 g/t gold; a Jorc-compliant proven reserve of 250 000 oz of gold at a minimum cutoff of 0.5 g/t gold; or the production of 75 000 oz of gold from mining operations on the project.

“This low-cost, all-share, strategic acquisition of the advanced and prospective Kerboulé gold project is a timely addition to our portfolio and in line with our strategy of acquiring complementary assets and rapidly seeking to unlock value at low cost,” explained Alecto CEO Mark Jones.

The company planned to undertake a Jorc-compliant resource estimation and preliminary economic assessment (PEA) of the 399.5 km² gold project, in the highly prospective Birimian-age Djibo gold belt.

“Accordingly, we have a clear plan to establish a maiden resource at Kerboulé and, thereafter, expand on it while we identify and assess the earliest route towards monetisation,” said Jones.

Kerboulé was located on the same regional trend as the five-million-ounce Inata gold mine owned by Avocet Mining, which had produced about 118 000 oz of gold in 2013.

Alecto would then use its technical team’s “well-practiced low-cost exploration techniques” to expand on the resource and provide a “solid basis” to embark on a PEA.

The acquisition included a fully equipped exploration camp at Kerboulé and an office in Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou, enabling Alecto’s technical team to get to work on the ground without having to wait for in-country infrastructure to be established.

The addition of in-house exploration drilling equipment already on site would facilitate the low-cost advancement of targets and resource-level drilling targets as set by the company.

Additional assets comprised various vehicles, generators and associated exploration equipment and a vehicle-mounted auger-drilling rig.