Franco-Nevada has a 2% NSR royalty on the Tasiast project operated by Kinross. The royalty originally covered three large permit areas in Mauritania, West Africa of which the most prominent is Tasiast with a currently reported mining license area of 312 km2 and a total exploration license area of 3,118 km2. Franco-Nevada’s royalty became payable once cumulative production exceeded 600 koz of gold and this threshold was crossed in the third quarter of 2011. In 2012, Tasiast produced 185 koz of gold.

Kinross acquired control of Tasiast in September 2010 pursuant to its acquisition of Red Back Mining Inc. Kinross expects to complete a pre-feasibility study for construction of a mid-sized Carbon-In-Leach mill in the 30,000 tpd range in 2013. Kinross has made the decision not to proceed with further study or implementation of a previously announced 60,000 tpd mill option.

Approximately 330,000 metres were drilled at Tasiast in 2012 of which most of the drilling (approximately 275,000 metres) focused on targets outside the 8 km footprint of the Tasiast deposit. Recent exploration results from two step-out drilling targets outside the current resource footprint at Tasiast have confirmed the presence of narrow, high-grade veins.