Orders would have to be placed this year for the long lead items for the mine that Randgold Resources would begin building in Cote d’Ivoire in January 2008, CEO Dr Mark Bristow told Mining Weekly Online in Johannesburg on Thursday.

Bristow said that the first gold was scheduled to be produced at Tongon in the latter half of 2010.

At the beginning of this year, Randgold exploration manager Paul Harbidge and his team had constructed a camp at Tongon in the north of the country.

Three drilling rigs had been operative 24 hours a day and baseline studies were under way.

“Everyone is going flat-out,” Bristow said.

A couple of more results needed to come in before models were developed.

The project would be rescoped by September and more details would be given when Randgold presented its quarterly results in October-November.

“The reason we are rescoping is that we will have to place orders for long-lead items before the end of this year,” he says.

Once the environmental impact assessment was complete, a start would be made on basic infrastructure.

“The Ivory Coast comes with a lot of established infrastructure compared to Loulo in Mali, which will speed things up,” Bristow pointed out.

“So we will start construction at this stage in earnest in January,” he said.

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