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摘要

Rainy River Resources COO Mike Mutchler contends that the key to survival is managing capital costs and capital estimates, and that all starts with good scoping and project definition. "It's making sure that we get the right fit for our application," he says. In particular, Mutchler criticizes other projects that he feels have overbuilt. "We're making a conscious effort not to build a Cadillac plant," he points out. "We're building a fit-for-purpose plant. We don't want to invest more capital than we need in our plant; we want to invest the right amount of capital." Kevin Bullock, president and CEO of Volta Resources, has a similar opinion. Volta currently has nine projects at varying stages of development in Burkina Faso and Ghana, and its flagship Kiaka project is moving towards the completion of a feasibility study. "You get to a point where people are saying, 'How big could this be?' and everybody's excited," Bullock says, "and then all of a sudden, when the market turns, it's too big and costs too much to build." Instead, he says, companies need to stay within themselves and not get caught up in their own hype. For Rainy River, currently in the late stages of feasibility, that meant actually decreasing the size of its gold plant in northern Ontario. Originally conceived as a 30,000-tonne-per-day mill, the company scaled it back to around 20,000 tonnes per day, bringing the capital costs down to a level that was forecast to have a higher probability of success.