Randgold Resources has teams reviewing the feasibility study and other data for the Moto gold project, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and expects to have an idea of the way forward at the huge project by year-end, CEO Mark Bristow said in an interview last week.

In July, Randgold trumped an earlier offer by Canada’s Red Back Mining for TSX- and ASX-listed Moto Goldmines, which holds 70% of the project.

Moto shareholders are scheduled to vote on the Randgold takeover on October 9.


While the current management has done a good job progressing and promoting the project, Bristow is keen to see what his team can come up with as they pore over the technical work on the asset.

One area to be tackled is the big 
discrepancy between the mineral resources and reserves at Moto.

The gold project, in which the DRC government holds the other 30%, has more than 22-million ounces in indicated and inferred resources, but only 5,5-million ounces of reserves.

(Of course, the word ‘only’ is used loosely and probably 
unwisely in this context: five-million-ounce deposits are nothing to be sneezed at.)

Still, if the company can convert just 10-million of those 
additional resources into mineable reserves, in a record gold price environment of $1 000/oz-plus, the numbers speak for themselves.

Randgold already has two big gold mines in Africa and expects to start first production from a third – the Tongon project in Côte d’Ivoire – by the end of next year.

“And I don’t believe there’s any merit in starting small,” Bristow commented.

“I believe that you start at the appropriate size for the orebody. A lot of the big mistakes over the years in African mines can be traced back to that issue.”

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