TRANSCRIPTION OF FINANCE NEWS NETWORK INTERVIEW WITH QUEENSLAND MINING COMPANY
(ASX:QMN) MANAGING DIRECTOR, HOWARD RENSHAW
Lelde Smits: Hello Lelde Smits reporting for the Finance News Network. Joining me today from Queensland Mining is Managing Director, Howard Renshaw. Howard welcome back to FNN. Can we start first with the recent severe weather conditions in Queensland, were your operations impacted?
Howard Renshaw: Not as a mining operation because we’re on care and maintenance at our major copper mines at this stage. But we have environmental factors that we have to attend to, to contain because it has been a very wet season and a long wet season. It does affect, you know, continuous drilling and getting around our projects while the ground’s so wet. And to put it into perspective, we’re about 900 kilometres from Cyclone Yasi inland at Cloncurry, Mt Isa and Mackay coal fields are 150 kilometres from the coast that caused that severe damage, and they got extremely heavy rain. So the answer is no, we’ve come through this season extremely well.
Lelde Smits: I see you’ve recently released the maiden JORC Resource Estimates for your Gilded Rose, Mt. Freda and Young Australian Projects. Congratulations on completing this phase. First to your gold assets, what‘s the JORC Resource estate at Mt. Freda?
Howard Renshaw: Well we’ve had to re-establish a new JORC Resource at Mt. Freda compared to the old ones there under 2004. Its 89,000 ounces and we have got aims to increase that by a lot more over the coming year.
Lelde Smits: What’s next for the Project?
Howard Renshaw: A Scoping Study - as this was an operating mine and we have a walk-up start here because there’s a lot of infrastructure in place. So the first thing is to now assess the economics, carry out further drilling there and also talk to some nearby neighbours who have got gold, which has been drilled up before, to see how we can all pull together.
Lelde Smits: To your Gilded Rose Project, what’s the size of the JORC Resource there?
Howard Renshaw: The first Resource we’ve come up with is 19,000 ounces at an average grade of 4 grams. The strike line is over 2 kilometres long. We’re going further down where the old timers put down shafts and where the cross faults are, and we’re holding high hopes that we can add very quickly and substantially to this Resource.
Lelde Smits: Is further drilling planned here too, and what are you looking to define?
Howard Renshaw: Yes most definitely during this coming season, at least 5,000 metres stage 1 and obviously we’ll go on and on and on. Its 2 kilometres long this strike link, we’ve got cross faults, we’ve got previous shafts there. We want to increase this Resource more, very quickly to see if we can get up to 80 -100,000 ounces. However, the plant on 20 to 25,000 ounces is a production year and that’s on care and maintenance.
Lelde Smits: What does this bring your total JORC Compliant Resource to in the area?
Howard Renshaw: Well 108,000 ounces at the moment and that’s going to grow and our target Resource is moving towards 250. And if we can get our neighbours in, we’re well aware of their Resources, you know that will be not only achieved through that, but a lot higher. And combining that together it makes a very robust area. We just formulated a company called Cloncurry Gold Fields and the reason why we said it’s not just our gold fields; we’ve got two of them - the Cloncurry Gold Field and we’ve got the Pumpkin Gold Field and there’re other strike lines. We have some; neighbours have got some, try and combine this together at Mt. Freda and Gilded Rose.
Lelde Smits: To your copper project the Young Australian, what are the JORC numbers for the Resource?
Howard Renshaw: Well the Young Australian we just announced 21,000 tonnes. Originally when Mt. Isa Mines had it and we bought it, they were indicating in their measurement indicator categories about 12,000, so it’s an uplift. I think that with further drilling that we’re planning, 5,000 metres on our mining leases that we’ll move to, you know, up around the 30 odd thousand tonnes. Now we are talking to our neighbour to try and get access along strike, and you know we’re in discussions with them to see what their view is and how we can manage that to expand this into a bigger opportunity. But we can mine the opportunity we’ve got.
Lelde Smits: With all these results let’s not forget your major copper project, White Range. What are your plans for the Project?
Howard Renshaw: The first plan is to carry out what we call a definitive feasibility study as opposed to the bankable feasibility study that was in place. Upgrade that with assessing our mining which we’re already starting - that’s our mine JORC Resources for the drilling, infill drilling and a bit more confidence maybe. But more importantly to move to the metallurgical confirmations processing and infrastructure costs, so that we can move down to putting in a major operation there 20 – 25,000 tonnes per annum within the next 2 years. That’s certainly an objective of the Company and we believe that the Resources support that right now, and we can see a doubling of our current JORC Resource of 240,000 tonnes in the area.
Lelde Smits: Besides White Range, how are discussions progressing around mining and processing either with other parties or third party facilities?
Howard Renshaw: Very advanced and we have a lot of mines in Duck Creek. We have the Young Australian Mine, not part of White Range, we can support White Range. We have the Stuart Mine to the south at Selwyn. They’ve all got oxide deposits that can be delivered to processing plants; we’re in discussions with joint venture partners who have processing plants. They’ve got sulphide and oxide processing plants and we can deliver either to them. They’ve told us they would specifically like oxides this season, but this is a great opportunity for QMC also to get some early cash flow besides the gold, while we’re trying to develop White Range which is the bigger scene.
Lelde Smits: Last question Howard, what’s the priority for the next six months?
Howard Renshaw: Well there’re two high priorities. One is White Range - you know to really add a lot more value to White Range and to get it to a position where we can move down to - with joint venture partners or in our own rights – to get that towards production. Very significant, great opportunity while the copper price is so good. At the same time we are going to mine and produce and send copper to our joint venture parties, and that could be more than one, over the next two to three years to progressively mine deposits that are not taking the integrity of White Range away – it’ll still be there. QMC has a lot of hidden assets, a lot of resources and I’m quite sure the market doesn’t really understand this and they will as we go forward. We’ve got a lot of opportunity to deliver copper.
Lelde Smits: Howard Renshaw, congratulations on the JORC results.
Howard Renshaw: Thank you.
ENDS
