Monday saw Red Rock Resources (LSE:RRR) reveal the long-awaited renewal of its licence areas covering its Mikei and Macalder gold projects in south-west Kenya. This is a huge step forward for the company, which the market has yet to wake up to.
The projects were 75% beneficially owned by Red Rock until a renegotiation with its partners in 2018 that will see ownership interest rise to 100%. They cover 245km2 in the under-explored Migori gold belt near Barrick’s North Mara gold operations in Tanzania.
Migori’s greater Mikei area already boasts a 1.2Moz JORC gold resource, while tailings on the property from the Macalder VMS present another 68,000 ounces of the precious metal ready for early production. The latter are in the most valuable Measured category.
The projects offer a great deal of upside potential, with a key component of Red Rock’s regional activities focusing on identifying new potentially economic areas of mineralization and expanding the project’s existing resource base.
Work by the company in the early 2010s already highlighted opportunities through a pit optimisation study and 12 new regional exploration targets.
Back in 2014, Red Rock had got as far completing the first stage of a Bankable Feasible Study for the project’s 200,000 oz Nyanza gold deposit as a stand-alone open pit operation.
A PEA provided projected life of mine revenue of US$95 million based on US$1,200/oz as well as an NPV(10) of US$8 million and CAPEX costs of just US$3 million – recoverable within six months of operation.
Meanwhile, Red Rock had also submitted in 2012 a mining lease application to the Kenya Government for the processing of the Macalder tailings.
However, in 2015, the then Minister moved to terminate the licenses covering the area.
After many years of patiently working through the issue, with the added complexity of straddling a period when 2016’s new Mining Act was coming into force, Red Rock finally announced on Monday that the anticipated issue of Prospecting Licenses PL/2018/0202 and PL/2018/0203 under the new Act have now been received for a period of three years from 2 August 2020.
Given the company has not been able to complete any exploration or technical work on the project for several years, it will now begin a review of how it intends to proceed across the project.
Speaking exclusively to MiningMaven, Red Rock’s chairman, Andrew Bell, told us:
“It has taken a long time for us to get to this point, but the timing could not now be more perfect for Red Rock. With gold prices setting all-time highs, there is a huge amount of renewed interest in the sector.
With a 1.2Moz JORC resource already in place, Red Rock has a platform to build on and expects to be able to achieve a substantial increase in resource size in the next phases of exploration with the eventual aim of building up a multi-million ounce deposit like North Mara.. We have an extremely strong foundation on which to work.
This represents a transformational opportunity for us and our shareholders and I expect plenty of positive updates in the coming months as we bring this project of enormous potential back to life.”
Author: Daniel Flynn
The Author does not hold any position in the stock(s) and/or financial instrument(s) mentioned in the piece.
MiningMaven Ltd, the owner of MiningMaven.com, owns a position in the stock(s) and/or financial instrument(s) mentioned in the piece.
MiningMaven Ltd, the owner of MiningMaven.com, has been paid for the production of this piece by the company or companies mentioned above.
MiningMaven.com and MiningMaven Ltd are not responsible for the article's content or accuracy and do not share the views of the author. News and research are not recommendations to deal, and investments may fall in value so that you could lose some or all of your investment. Past performance is not an indicator of future performance
