(Agence Ecofin) – The Kouri and Babonga projects constitute the gold portfolio of Golden Rim Resources in Burkina Faso. With the development of its Kada gold project in Guinea, these two assets are no longer essential for the Australian company, which is therefore looking for a buyer.
In Burkina Faso, the Australian mining junior Golden Rim Resources will have to find a new buyer for its two gold projects Kouri and Babonga. On Monday, August 15, it announced the cancellation of the agreement concluded at the end of June with the Burkinabé BAOR Sarl for the two assets, following the expiry of two payment deadlines not respected.
According to Golden Rim, the buyer has indicated that its lenders have pulled out and therefore it is unable to fulfill its obligations. The obligations in question concern, on the one hand, the payment of a cash consideration of $15.5 million and the financing of exploration work on the two projects.
The current owner has indeed identified mineral and indicated resources of 2 million ounces of gold at Kouri and carried out some drilling at Babonga, but there is still work to be done to actually produce gold there.
While the stage of financing exploration work usually forces most African mining juniors to sell their projects or at least to sell most of them, the situation already seemed more complex for BAOR Sarl. It is indeed a company with no experience in the mining sector and whose existence until now is limited to the various press releases of Golden Rim.
The Australian company presents it as a company wishing “create a large African mining group» and led by Roger Bambara, a «CEO with significant experience in the insurance industry“. Note that no website or account on social networks can invalidate or confirm this information.