TRANSCRIPTION OF FINANCE NEWS NETWORK INTERVIEW WITH ROBUST RESOURCES LIMITED
(ASX:ROL) MANAGING DIRECTOR, GARY LEWIS
Clive Tompkins: Hello Clive Tompkins reporting for the Finance News Network. Joining me for the first time from Robust Resources is Managing Director, Gary Lewis. Gary welcome to FNN, can you start by introducing the company?
Gary Lewis: Thanks Clive, yeah Robust is in the mineral exploration business up in Indonesia, a remote island called Romang Island in eastern Indonesia. We listed in February 2007 with a suite of New South Wales assets. Subsequently we’ve either sold or farmed those out and we’ve been drilling up on Romang since November 2008.
Clive Tompkins: Thanks Gary, so you operate in Indonesia, where in particular?
Gary Lewis: We’re in eastern Indonesia in the Maluku Regency which is east of East Timor, west of West Papua and about 600 nautical miles north of Darwin.
Clive Tompkins: Good Gary, so can you tell us about the mineralisation of Romang Island?
Gary Lewis: Well essentially we’re looking at two calderas that are joined at the hip if you like. So in the south we have oxide zone which has got gold and silver, underneath which is sitting lead zinc copper. In the north we’re targeting a gold rich porphyry system, so there’s quite a mix of metals there.
Clive Tompkins: So can you tell us about the company’s expertise in the region and your new management appointments to the Project?
Gary Lewis: Look both at Board level and management level we’ve got a lot of in-country experience. So on the Board for example we have Andrew Wilson who used to run BHP Billiton in Jakarta for eight years. The key technical guy John Levings, who’s been up there for twenty/twenty-five years, ran a mining services business - so good deep experience.
The most recent appointment we made to the management team was Gordon Lewis who was the last person to build an operational gold mine in Indonesia, and then as well as having George Katchan who has been up there for many years as well, as our General Manager in-country.
Clive Tompkins: Okay so where’s Robust Resources’ share price today and what’s its market cap?
Gary Lewis: Currently the share price is sitting round $1.90 and market cap’s about 160 million. So if you did the math on that, you can see we don’t have many shares on issue – only 84 million shares on issue fully diluted, which represents great value for shareholders moving forward.
Clive Tompkins: You’re concentrating on two distinct areas, the north and the south of Romang Island. Can you tell us about your Projects starting with Lakuawahi in the south?
Gary Lewis: Lakuawahi is an area – Romang is an ex Billiton project and that’s where Billiton did all their work in the south and that’s where we’ve done all our drilling. We’ve done about, nearly 120 holes for 15,000 metres of diamond core drilling - they’re our own drills. Essentially the mineralisation there is we’re looking at a gold silver cap and under that cap is sitting the polymetallics, so we’re seeing gold, silver, lead, zinc, copper. So very large system 6 x 4 kilometres - so plenty of room to house a world class ore body.
Clive Tompkins: And what about the north of the Island?
Gary Lewis: The north is a much larger more deeply eroded system than the south, so it offers a larger scale of mineralisation, we hope. We’re targeting a gold rich copper porphyry system and our porphyries representing bulk tonnage. We’re probably two years behind in exploration in the north than we are in the south, so we’re running some geophysical work at the moment and we’ll start drilling this half.
Clive Tompkins: Good thanks Gary, so what’s your funding position and will you need to raise additional funds this year?
Gary Lewis: Look, we’re in the fortunate position with so few shares on issue and almost $60 million in the bank, that it’s unlikely we’ll need to tap the market again for exploration. So it certainly won’t be coming back to the market in the next couple of years.
Clive Tompkins: Gary last question. What’s the priority for Robust Resources over the next three to six months?
Gary Lewis: Look twofold. In the south is bringing home our JORC, our main JORC Resource - so defining the Resource. And in the north, it’s starting to drill. So it’s as simple as that.
Clive Tompkins: Gary Lewis thanks for introducing Robust Resources.
Gary Lewis: Thank you.
ENDS
