Robex has golden connections in Mali

When Richard Savard, president of Robex Resources (RBX-V), walks down the street in Bamako, Mali’s capital, he’s a familiar face to many.

“Everybody calls me by name — it’s my second home,” says Savard from his Montreal office.

Spending nearly 19 years in Mali as a geologist and teacher has afforded Savard the best of connections, not only through former students and colleagues, but friends outside the mining community as well.

Robex now has a $2-million drill program under way on three of its 10 gold properties in Mali, nine of which were acquired since Savard joined the company in early 2005. Savard quickly guided Robex into a joint venture with Malian company Geo-Service International so Robex could acquire three new concessions, including one of its priorities, the Mininko gold property in southern Mali.

Right now, many are debating whether it’s the recently acquired Wili-Wili gold property in western Mali or Mininko that is sitting in the no. 1 seat.

Savard believes it’s the more advanced Mininko project, but he’s very aware of the hype surrounding Wili-Wili, which returned some impressive grades from a trench dug in December.

The trench was 150 metres long, 2 metres deep and yielded grades of 1 gram gold per tonne or higher. It was dug in the Fandou area of Wili-Wili, where several pits in the northern-central section of a 2.8 km by 600-metre gold-arsenic anomaly discovered last June showed high soil geochemistry grades.

“Some of the pits gave incredible values,” such as 12 metres at 70 grams gold per tonne, Savard says.

A 13-metre-wide mineralized zone was discovered in the trench, grading 2.29 grams gold. As well, two of three pits dug in the trench graded 1.96 grams gold over 4 metres and 3.58 grams over 5 metres.

The trench allowed them to see the different geology across the property. It showed stockwork, a pipe or funnel-shaped zone of fracturing, where veins, veinlets and disseminated mineralization tend to form, and quartz, a common rock-forming mineral.

Savard has known of Wili-Wili since 1974, when he started working as a geology teacher at a technical school in Bamako through the Canadian International Development Agency.

The location of the property deterred other exploration companies for many years, he says, because it involved a few days of travel from Bamako, including a river-crossing by boat. En route to Wili-Wili, Iamgold (img-t, iag-n) and Randgold Resources (gold-q, rrs-l) operate the Sadiola gold mine and AngloGold Ashanti (au-n, agd-l, anano-j) operates the Loulo gold mine. Over the years, the roads have been upgraded, so Wili-Wili can now be reached in less than a day.

Robex is currently digging two more trenches, 200 metres north and south of the first trench. The company plans to carry out a detailed soil-geochemistry survey to evaluate zones that have not been tested. In February, Robex will do some bulldozing to improve access so a drill program can begin at the end of March.

Meanwhile, Robex is conducting an internal resource estimate on its Mininko property. In 2004, the Nampala target at Mininko was drilled by Golden Star Resources (GSC-T, GSS-X), including 13 reverse-circulation (RC) drill holes totalling 2,228 metres and six diamond-drill holes for another 528 metres. There was gold mineralization in all the holes. One of the higher-grade intersections averaged 26 grams gold per tonne over 13 metres.

Savard says the property shows some similarities to the Morila gold mine just to the north, operated by AngloGold and Randgold. Morila produced about 500,000 oz. gold in 2006.

N’Golopene

Robex is also focusing on its N’Golopene property, which is next to resolute mining’s (RMGGF-O, RSG-A) Syama gold mine in southern Mali.

The Syama mine was established by BHP Billiton (BHP-N, BLT-L) in 1990 as an oxide operation. It was purchased by Randgold in 1996, but placed on care and maintenance in 2001, until Resolute acquired it in 2004. Syama, which hosts resources of 66.6 million tonnes grading 3 grams gold, or about 6.4 million oz., is slated to start production this year.

The mine is located at the junction of a “Y-shaped” deposit, but its branches to the north and northeast extend onto the N’Golopene property. Robex has completed soil geochemistry and geophysics testing on the property. A 2,000- to 3,000-metre RC drilling program was scheduled to begin at the end of January.

Resolute had tried to acquire N’Golopene, owned by a Malian citizen, but Savard’s reputation landed the property in his lap.

“I knew that gentleman and he came to me and said, ‘I would rather do business with you people, so if you are interested, it’s a very good property,'” Savard says.

After analyzing the available information on N’Golopene, the company agreed it had potential and pounced on it.

That his first language is French helps Savard in French-speaking Mali, but he also speaks Bambara, the local language.

Savard is not the only member of Robex that makes operations in Mali run smoothly.

Serge Biron, Robex vice-president and manager based in Mali, had crossed paths with Savard before joining the company — in Mali and a number of other African countries.

“Both of us are well-known and respected,” says Savard, who has also worked for Barrick Gold (ABX-T, ABX-N), the United Nations and the World Bank.

He attributes some of this respect to the care Robex takes to ensure the yearly technical report required by the government is on time and of high quality. Savard has been told that Robex is one of few to meet the deadline.

In some countries, companies would be penalized for being late, but in Mali, things are different.

“Malians have a lot of patience and they will try to accommodate people if they give a good reason for why they are late,” Savard says. “Mali is a friendly mining country. I’ve worked in some twenty African countries and without naming them, I can tell you that’s not the case in all of them. Some are pretty tough to work in, especially with the mining authorities.”

Savard is heading back to Mali for three to four weeks in March to check on the drill program at Wili-Wili.

He says a few of Robex’s more grassroots gold projects, such as Moussala and Kossaya, may be on the chopping block if early exploration results are insignificant.

Robex’s only pre-Savard property, the Diangounte gold concession, will stay in the company’s portfolio — not just because of the time and money invested in it, but because Savard thinks the source of the placer deposit has finally been located.

Robex currently has about $1.5 million in the bank, which should carry the company through to the end of the exploration season in June. The company’s last financing was for $3.2 million in May 2006.

With 90.5 million fully diluted shares, Robex has a market capitalization of $13 million. Its stock has recently traded at around 25 in a 52-week price range of 18-40.