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MATSA RESOURCES LIMITED — AGM Information 2007
Nov 27, 2007
65296_rns_2007-11-27_a891e6f3-8e97-494e-bc45-3261ce5d15f8.pdf
AGM Information
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ASX Announcement
ASX Codes: KAL, KALO
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Chairman’s Address- 2007 AGM
Kalgoorlie Boulder Resources – Michael Atkins
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the annual general meeting of Kalgoorlie Boulder Resources as we enter what I firmly believe will be the most exciting and unprecedented period of growth in the Company’s history.
First, of all, I’d like to thank you for turning out in such numbers for this, my first annual meeting as Chairman, and the Company’s first such gathering under its dynamic new board and management.
As you are all aware, I joined the company in March when the Company completed the acquisition of the Norseman Gold Project.
At the time of the acquisition, KBR was a Company lacking in focus: it had devoted most of its limited resources on diverse portfolio of greenfields exploration prospects ranging from gold, to nickel, uranium and even oil and gas.
As shareholders witnessing the steady decline in the Company’s share price at that time, I have no doubt you would agree that that approach was not working and not in the interests of the Company or shareholders.
However, the acquisition of the Norseman Gold Project can only be described as a watershed.
Firstly, it instantly delivered your Company one of the largest and most prospective landholdings, covering some 124 square kilometres of prospective ground, in one of the richest and most productive gold regions in all of Western Australia.
The Norseman region alone has produced in excess of 6 million ounces of gold since 1935.
Secondly, the Norseman project also came with a confirmed JORC-compliant inferred gold resource of more than one million ounces at the Mt Henry, Selene, North Scotia and Abbotshall prospects.
That is incredibly important in that it instantly elevates the Company above most other gold explorers by delivering a platform from which Kalgoorlie Boulder can readily build and realistically achieve its ambition of developing the Norseman Gold Project to be a significant gold producer in its own right.
Thirdly, it came with a very comprehensive data base largely prepared by previous owners Kinross Gold, who spent some $9million on the area. This has allowed our exploration team to have a flying start on the project. The recent drilling results and resource upgrades are a clear demonstration of the value of this database.
Finally, the acquisition of Norseman also brought with it the support of Stanley Lewis and Richard Alter, the principals of your Company’s leading shareholder – US
based investment group RASL Au LLC – who are now non-executive directors, albeit very active none-executive directors as they are actively involved in shaping the company’s growth and development strategy.
Their input will be important as they introduce new investors from both the Australian and international markets who share our belief in the Company’s potential to become a significant Australian gold explorer/producer.
Faced with the task of capitalising fully on the potential of the Norseman Project, the Board quickly realised that the Company needed to stop wasting resources on diversions.
Hence, one of the first decisions taken by the Board following my appointment was to commence a Strategic Review of the Company and its assets.
As a result, we as a Board decided that shareholders would be best served by focusing on the Norseman Project and divesting our other less advanced assets.
The Company had already entered into an agreement to dispose of its uranium assets to Burey Gold. In view of the Company’s cash position at the time that the new Board was appointed, the Company was able to boost its cash position through renegotiating the sale of the uranium assets so that the Company received $1.75 million in cash and also received two million shares in listed explorer Burey Gold Ltd.
The Company is also continuing to review the options available to it in respect to its oil and gas assets in the United States. As part of this review we formed the view that there may have been misleading and false representations and breach of contract by the vendors of these projects, and we have served proceedings on the vendors Metro Energy on several counts, seeking a return of the $US3mill purchase consideration and damages. We are unable to comment further on this action whilst it proceeds through the US legal system.
I’m sure you would agree that the Company’s new direction has delivered outstanding and early results, both on the ground and in the eyes of the investment community.
I will shortly hand over to our Operations Manager Mark Sampson, who will give you a detailed presentation on what we have planned at Norseman and where we think it might take us in the months ahead.
But before I do, I would first like to talk a little about the remarkable progress we have made already.
Though we were only able to start significant work at Norseman in June, we have probably already made significant progress and have done more than the previous holders were able to achieve in recent years.
Earlier this month, we were able to announce a 20 per cent increase in the total inferred resource estimate at Norseman to just over 1.2 million ounces of gold.
That achievement is important for two reasons:
Firstly, it was achieved despite raising the average cut-off grade from the 0.7 grams per tonne used previously to 1.0 gpt, thereby significantly improving the robustness of our resource calculation.
Secondly, the increase resulted from a 36% lift in the main Mt Henry resource to 630,000oz, and included for the first time an indicated resource of some 310,000 oz – again a move that significantly increases our confidence in the quality of the resource.
As I am sure you noticed, the response from the market was immediate and overwhelming, as investors realised how undervalued the Company had become.
Since then, of course, we have followed up with fresh drilling results at Mt Henry and Selene that have provided in-fill drilling to improve the quality of the resource calculations as well as confirming extensions of the mineralisation and have identified areas with the potential host higher grade material.
We are confident that these drilling results will enable us to announce a further resource upgrade in the next few weeks, and that our ongoing drilling program will lead to further resource increases as results come to hand.
To that end, we are planning to beef up work at Norseman by significantly increasing the amount of drilling by undertaking a further 8400 metres of RC drilling for the next nine months as well as a diamond drilling program and a series of geophysical surveys.
The focus of the RC drilling is to delineate exploration targets which are generated from the geophysics and to follow-up on further resource drilling.
The diamond drilling will be focused on providing geotechnical and structural knowledge on the two main resources at Mt Henry and Selene deposits.
The company will be accelerating its regional exploration using the V-TEM geophysical technique which is highly suited to finding gold in the Banded Iron Formations, as has been demonstrated in similar settings in Canada. We have started talks with various geophysical survey providers to put together the plan of attack.
With that in mind, we hope to finalise scoping studies into possible development scenarios early next year as a prelude to formal feasibility studies, and hopefully will be in a position to demonstrate a feasible mining project. We can then consider various development options from sale, joint venture, toll treatment or possibly even stand-alone mining.
As we move the project from inferred resource, through indicated to measured and then into mineable reserves, we will continue to add value to our shareholderswhether we actually mine the ore ourselves or not!
And of course we are now operating in an environment where the $A gold price is over $930 for the first time ever!
This will hopefully put us in the position to use our elevated share price to use our shares as a form of currency to acquire other mining projects.
In addition to Norseman, we also have high hopes for our Clinker Hill nickel project, which lies just 40km north-north-east of the rich Kambalda nickel district.
Initial geochemistry has already identified a number of promising anomalies which the Company intends to follow up and build upon in the months ahead. Our current intention is to at least do the early stage reconnaissance work ourselves before considering possible joint venture etc.
Achieving our ambitions will require plenty of hard work, focus, commitment and support from everyone associated with Kalgoorlie Boulder Resources: the Board, our management, the communities in which we operate and you, our shareholders, as well as the broader investment community.
To assist us with that objective, we intend to keep the lines of communication as open as possible with you, the shareholders, to ensure that you are kept fully of the Company’s progress.
In fact, this public investor presentation is I think positive demonstration of this new approach.
We also intend to actively engage with the investment community with a view to broadening our shareholder base to include institutional and high level investors who share our vision for the Company.
We are pleased to have secured a placement of $2.5 million on as announced earlier today, which has been negotiated over the previous week. This comes with the support of Paterson Securities in Sydney Perth and Melbourne and we welcome their input to our future success.
On that note, let me conclude by saying I look forward to standing before you again at next year’s annual meeting to comment on what I am sure will be another year of achievement.
So once more, thank you we will now start our presentation.