Africa-focused miner Randgold Resources last week affirmed its intention to remain a dividend-driven midtier gold producer in a global mining environment of rising costs and difficult equity and debt markets.

CE Mark Bristow said that after the past number of years’ sustained gold price above $1 000/oz, any midtier gold miner that was in production should by now have shored up significant free cash flow with which to fund growth projects.

He said Randgold could technically afford to build a new $600-million mine every five years, while maintaining attractive dividend payouts. So comfortable is the company that, in February, it had lifted its yearly dividend for the period ended December 31 by 25% to 50c a share, compared with 40c a share for 2011.

Speaking at an investor presentation hosted by Rangold during the Prospectors and Devel- opers Association of Canada’s show, Bristow said, as long as there was about $600-million to $700-million cash in the bank to work with, he was happy to distribute the rest as dividends.

He emphasised that the company saw itself as a good potential joint venture partner for juniors.

Randgold, which is currently constructing the $990-million Kibali gold mine, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), would, however, not consider new projects under three-million ounces.

Bristow, who owns just less than 1% of Randgold, and who had in recent years been a strong advocate against proposed far-reaching changes to the mining codes within the DRC and in other African countries in which it operates, dispelled a number of ‘fads’ that he said seemed to plague the gold mining industry lately.

Among these, he said, was the industry’s current misguided focus on ‘capital discipline’. He said this had become a trend as investors were merely seeking to recover money lost through bad investments.

“This is the resource extraction business. One needs to constantly invest in exploration [which is usually the first expense to be cut] to replace reserves.”