Transcription of Finance News Network Interview with Indochine Mining Limited (ASX:IDC) CEO, Stephen PromnitzLelde Smits: Hello I’m Lelde Smits for the Finance News Network and joining me today from gold development company Indochine Mining Limited
(ASX:IDC) is CEO, Stephen Promnitz. Stephen welcome back.
Stephen Promnitz: Thank you very much.
Lelde Smits: What are your major milestones in the past two years of trading on the ASX?
Stephen Promnitz: Well we’ve been very busy, we started off with projects in Cambodia but we wanted to find a more advanced project. We acquired a major gold/silver project in Papua New Guinea called Mt Kare and in a relatively short period of 12 to 18 months, we’ve completed the first ever prefeasibility study, the first ever landowner investigation study. We’ve been able to get the big end of town supporting us and now we’re charging ahead with further studies, and even some bonanza high grade zones.
Lelde Smits: To your flagship Mt Kare project in Papua New Guinea, where Indochine Mining has just completed a prefeasibility study. What are the
highlights?
Stephen Promnitz: Well the key out of the prefeasibility study is simply this. The basics of our project demonstrate that we’ve got a robust gold and silver mine, relatively low strip ratio, open cut. It’s something that would make us a solid mid-tier gold producer on the ASX, producing 100,000/160,000 ounces a year. That’s the sort of project that people want to see as a solid base case.
Lelde Smits: In the near term Indochine Mining is undertaking a drilling program. When do you expect to release the results, and what’s the potential for a resource upgrade?
Stephen Promnitz: We still have about 30 holes that we are awaiting on results. We’ve had consistent medium to high grades and every now and then, some bonanza grades coming out. And so over the next two to three months, we’ll have the rest of those results in and a resource upgrade. The resource that we have at the moment was based on historical drilling of 60,000 metres and what we’re seeing is better grades, and an improvement in the quality of the resource. So we’re hoping to have that out early in the New Year.
Lelde Smits: And considering all goes to plan Stephen, when would you hope to be in production?
Stephen Promnitz: We’re aiming to be in production in the first-half of 2015, producing 100,000/160,000 ounces a year. As we go through our feasibility study, we’ll be able to have a tighter hold on exactly what that will be, bringing some of the higher grades forward so that we can smooth that out, because it very much depends on the grade. And there is particular, gold near surface that could easily make that look quite exciting in the first couple of years.
Lelde Smits: Now as you mentioned grade, you’ve recently triggered market interest when announcing bonanza gold zones. What is the significance of this discovery for the Company?
Stephen Promnitz: What’s been interesting is we’ve had one of the world’s most qualified people Tony Burgess, who had worked at the neighbouring world class Porgera goldmine for 11 years; he was a person in charge of geology and resources. We just wanted him to review our data that was all, just to get a bit of an idea; he was just between jobs, he’d been running his own company for the last eight years. He came on site and said Steve: ‘what you’ve got here is three bonanza zones, you just need to drill down alongside and you’ll find the sorts of things that triggered the Porgera mine starting’.
And what’s so exciting about that - Porgera had been drilling for 25 years and then they discovered these high grade bonanza zones. And in the space of a few years, they were into production producing more than an ounce a tonne, over 40 grams was their head grade. That’s the sort of thing that in today’s day with gold prices higher than $1,500 an ounce, that’s where you really make some money.
Lelde Smits: Turning to your financials now, Indochine has just completed a $13.2 million capital raising. Who supported the issue?
Stephen Promnitz: We were very happy that our lead investor this time was the Capital Group. Capital are one of the top ten fund managers in the world with over a trillion under management, and now we have BlackRock which manages about $6.5 trillion. And Capital with over $1 trillion under management, two of them in our register of more than five per cent and for $100 million market cap, that’s almost unheard of. They do a lot of due diligence, like Genesis which is a very solid merging market fund and Baker Steel, which is a specialist resource fund in gold. To have that quality on our register, you can see where the big end of town can see where this project is going.
Lelde Smits: And where does Indochine plan to deploy the Funds?
Stephen Promnitz: Well as I mentioned, first of all we’re going to focus on our bonanza zones. We’re also going to make sure that we complete the rest of the assays on these 30 holes, so that we can see where the resource upgrade is going. And I think - look we’re getting some market traction now, people can see this project is going places and it’s going to be a pretty exciting next 18 months.
Lelde Smits: Stephen Promnitz, thank you for the update on Indochine Mining.
Stephen Promnitz: Thanks very much.
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