TRANSCRIPTION OF FINANCE NEWS NETWORK INTERVIEW WITH MACPHERSONS REWARD GOLD LIMITED (ASX:MRP) MANAGING DIRECTOR, MORRIE GOODZ
Joining me today from junior gold explorer MacPhersons Reward (ASX:MRP) is Managing Director, Morrie Goodz. Morrie welcome to FNN. Could you start by introducing MacPhersons Reward?Morrie Goodz: Sure thanks Lelde, and thank you for the offer to be here. MacPhersons Reward is a young exploration company based in Kalgoorlie. We have projects in gold, silver, zinc, copper and lead, and it’s a very exciting time for us as a young explorer.
Okay, so when did you list and what’s your market cap?Morrie Goodz: We listed in December 2010 and our current market cap is $60 million.
And what percentage of projects do you own?Morrie Goodz: We own 100% of all our projects. We go to grass roots acquisition opportunities where we can acquire and be in management control of the full project.
Now to your projects starting in the West. Could you tell us about your namesake project MacPhersons Reward?Morrie Goodz: MacPhersons Reward is a fantastic project; it was only discovered in the 1980’s and is essentially a Greenfields area with limited production. It has 8 historic open pits in the area, the deepest one is only 40 metres deep, so fantastic open opportunity and over 60% of the tenure remains unexplored under about 5 metres of soil cover.
So what’s taking place now?Morrie Goodz: We currently have three drilling programmes going on at the moment. We focus around diamond drilling to ensure the quality of the sample and the understanding of the geology. Most of the project areas we’re drilling have never had a diamond drill ore before. So we’re getting fantastic results. It’s a real eye opener and we’re actually showing that some of these deposits that were only developed to 40 metres depth, in fact go to deeper than 300 metres. That’s in our first stage; we’re stopping our drilling at 300 metres.
Okay and what’s planned for the year ahead?Morrie Goodz: Well it’s very exciting. Next year we’re planning to get two of our advanced exploration projects up and running and into production. The two projects are in the MacPhersons discovery pit itself and the Tycho Greenfields discovery area. So in the MacPhersons we’ve drilled down to 300 metres where we’ve stopped our drilling. Fantastic results - that’s still an ongoing drilling programme as we look at a big pit model. Tycho which is a completely new discovery, we see that as been the first cab off the rank. We had a great ASX announcement this morning where we released the drilling had just been completed and we’re going to a JORC Resource Update.
And what’s the potential for an upgrade?Morrie Goodz: Well we see, when we initially took on the project it only had an exploration target of 7,000 ounces. We see the potential target there being in the order of 100,000 ounces.
All going well, when do you hope to be in production?Morrie Goodz: We have recently purchased the Nimbus Mill site and we are setting that up so we will have dual gold and silver circuits. It’s planned that that will be up and running in 2012. So we see production starting in 2012 and if we get our pits into production earlier – there are 3 mills that exist at Coolgardie, so we could look at two processing options if we wanted to produce earlier.
And what mine life are we looking at?Morrie Goodz: I envisage every mine life as being infinite. I’ve had the good fortune of working in a number of mines with the life in excess of 100 years and I really try to keep an open mind. Having that perspective, I think it’s very comfortable to say that the projects we’re looking at, at the moment easily have lives between about 4 and 10 years, based on the existing modelling that we’re doing. But again, I would like to see them in 100 years’ time.
Thanks Morrie, now to your acquisition of the Nimbus silver and zinc mine. How did the opportunity arise?Morrie Goodz: Look we were in the market for a mill. The Nimbus Mill came available and as we examined the opportunity to acquire the mill, we realised there was a fantastic silver resource there. So initially we looked at it as being a combination of adding a new dimension to the Company, being a silver miner as well as a gold miner and having our own mill. So it allowed us to have the entire value chain within the Company structure.
Having seen the data and now that we just completed our due diligence and remember, we only just acquired the mill two weeks ago, we now see quite extensive zinc, copper and lead resource there. And we’ve identified now five lenses of massive sulphide. Now these deposits generally occur in clusters of up to 20 deposits, so we are very excited.
And on what terms was the purchase made?Morrie Goodz: Purchase was made for a cash and share package which involved 3 million in cash and 1.5 million in shares.
Okay, now you also have a number of other projects in the Kalgoorlie gold fields, including a tenement called Queensland. At what stage are these projects and what are you targeting?Morrie Goodz: Queensland is one of our projects that we’ve just started the planning work for exploration in 2012. It’s got a great history; it’s got a number of deposits on it that have had drilling, I believe there’s a few hundred drill holes into it. All percussion holes identified some great mineralisation zones, I’m talking zones that grade from 1 gram to 10 grams and so we see it as really exciting as part of our big picture for 2012. And of course another announcement we made today on the ASX was that we commenced drilling today at the A-Cap deposit which is between the MacPhersons and Tycho deposits. And A-Cap has significant exploration targets that we’re identifying, again never been diamond drilled. So the diamond drilling is starting today and its great news for our future.
Now to corporate matters. Are you funded for the rest of the year?Morrie Goodz: We are fully funded. We have 16 million cash in the bank, that’s more than enough to keep our very aggressive exploration
programmes going and we look forward to the next year of drilling, and preparation for production.
So is the Company’s strategy to become a miner with MacPhersons as your key project?Morrie Goodz: Yes it’s a history that many of the corporate management team have been long involved in. So we have a Board of Directors, Ashok Parekh and Jeff Williams and myself who have all been in owners and operators of producing mines, and active processing facilities. So we’ve been there and it’s always been our goal that MacPhersons Reward would be in production and that we’d stand on our own two feet as far as cash flow and being able to, you know, fund our capital developments.
Last question Morrie, Where would you like to see MacPhersons Reward this time next year?Morrie Goodz: This time next year I’d like to be coming to this conference as a producer. I think that’s a very realistic target and with a bit of good planning and timing, we may be a producer of both gold and silver.
Morrie thanks very much for your introduction to MacPhersons Reward.Morrie Goodz: Thank you.
ENDS
