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Sudbury Contact Mines Ltd. (SUD) |
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CEOCFO
Interview Index |
This is a printer friendly page! Sudbury
Contact’s Timiskaming Diamond Project covers over 83,000 acres and
straddles
the provincial border in northern Ontario/northwestern Quebec BIO:
CEOCFOinterviews: Mr.
Boyd, will you tell us about your background with Sudbury Contact and what the company is
currently involved with? Mr. Boyd: “I have been here at Sudbury and the associated company Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd., which is an intermediate producing gold company, for nineteen years starting back in 1985. I have a financial background and have been CEO of Sudbury Contact and Agnico for six years now. Sudbury has been quite active for a smaller junior exploration company and they were able to remain very active because of the financial and management support it has received from its major shareholder, that being Agnico Mines Ltd., which is listed on the NYSE and TSX. With that support, we have maintained a very active exploration program, both in gold and in diamonds. We have recently been focused on reactivating our diamond exploration program. We were successful back in the early and mid nineties in making some diamond discoveries in northern Ontario but we put those projects on hold. We have reactivated them over the last few years and have been successful in not only moving some of our diamond discoveries forward, but also in making new discoveries as announced earlier this year.” CEOCFOinterviews: Why did you choose to reactive the diamond projects? Mr. Boyd: “Reactivation was simply because the targets were of high quality and we had the financial resources to move those projects forward. In the late nineties, the exploration business for both gold and diamonds went through some very difficult times due to declining commodity prices. We had to make some choices as a mining and exploration group and one of those choices was to put the diamond properties on hold. As the market for our business improved, we had excess funds that we could employ and our diamond properties have some of the best potential within our portfolio. That is why we have become more aggressive on the diamond side of it recently.” CEOCFOinterviews: Will you tell us about your diamond properties and the recent discoveries you have had? Mr. Boyd: “The first piece of news is a more advanced assessment of one of the diamond bearing kimberlite discoveries that was made back in the 1990’s. We extracted about eight hundred tons of material from this structure to determine its diamond content. That assessment is still underway with an audit and review being conducted in South Africa by De Beers, which is now looking at our analysis of the results of that one particular diamond bearing structure. In and around that particular area, we have been quite active doing exploration work and we recently announced the discovery of two new diamond bearing structures that we referred to in our most recent press releases as kimberlite KL-01 and kimberlite KL-22. As a result of those discoveries, prior to the announcement, we went out and staked additional claims in the region. We essentially quadrupled our land position, which by way of reference is about a five hour drive north of Toronto, so it is not remote compared to many diamond projects in the world. As a result of the expansion of the property position, we have a lot of work to do up there and we are currently reviewing the plans for this work. Not only do we have to do further assessments of our two most recent diamond discoveries, but we also have to do target identification work on the additional claims that we have staked as well as drill several promising targets that were identified in earlier work. To date we have only drilled about a third of our high priority targets and that work discovered the two most recent diamond bearing structures. There are still many targets, which need to be drilled in this area. We are excited about the fact that we are now identifying multiple diamond-bearing structures in an area that is not remote and is very close to infrastructure.” CEOCFOinterviews: How long will the different projects take? Mr. Boyd: “Diamond exploration is very different than exploration for gold. It takes time and because we have so many targets, we imagine ourselves drilling and exploring in this area for many years. But it does not mean that we cannot take some of these better targets and discoveries and move them forward much quicker. The next phase will be over the next six to twelve months. We will continue to do geophysical work and identify new targets that we’ll require drilling on the expanded property. We will also do additional assessment work on our most advanced diamond target, Kimberlite 95-2, which is currently the subject of analysis by the De Beers group. Once we get the results of the De Beers work and combine it with our earlier assessment work, then we will decide what the next phase will be for that diamond structure, which is much more advanced than our most recent discoveries.” CEOCFOinterviews: Are there new technologies that you are able to use to your advantage? Mr. Boyd: “In our case, it is a matter of applying several technologies that have worked successfully for us in this particular area. We use a combination of sampling, which is taking soil samples from the surface and doing chemical analysis on them. We combine that with other geophysical tools to identify targets. The combination of those two tools, when you overlap them, has worked for us in identifying the best targets to drill and from that work we select drill targets. Two of the main targets that we drilled this year resulted in the two new diamond discoveries. We have found a method that seems to work in this particular area and we are going to continue to use that method, but we are going to use it more aggressively because we are going to be more active given the most recent discoveries.” CEOCFOinterviews: In what other areas are you active currently? Mr. Boyd: “Sudbury has some gold properties in the Province of Newfoundland on the east coast of Canada and we also have some properties in the southwestern U.S. We have some properties in Idaho and Nevada where we are drilling and exploration. We are active for an exploration company with a market capitalization of roughly twenty five million dollars. That is because we can draw on resources from our larger shareholder who has demonstrated success in finding and building mines and that has been invaluable to Sudbury Contact in allowing Sudbury to move itself forward in a cost effective manner.” CEOCFOinterviews: Will you be pursuing the gold projects? Mr. Boyd: “As we sit back and look at the opportunities for this company, we realize that we cannot be doing everything being a smaller company. We would like to do everything but you cannot finance and manage the number of opportunities that we currently have given the success that we have had in diamonds recently. If we find a diamond structure that is economic, we are in a much better position to build something because of the proximity to infrastructure. The bottom line is how do we, as a management team, move this company forward to create the most shareholder value. We continue to work our properties and continue to drill them aggressively and we will come up with a strategy that will continue to move the company forward.” CEOCFOinterviews: Will
you tell us a bit about the diamond industry? CEOCFOinterviews: In
closing, why should investors be interested in Sudbury and diamond Mr. Boyd: “Exploration is high risk but also high reward if you are fortunate enough to find a deposit that is economical. I think there is always room in one’s portfolio for resource exploration companies. The key is to pick the companies that have the staying power and the companies that have the expertise to find an economic deposit. The returns can be huge once you move from the exploration stage to the developmental mine building stage. Sudbury’s association with Agnico-Eagle puts us in a unique position because Agnico-Eagle and its team are proven mine finders and builders and the same people that work on the Agnico-Eagle exploration program and were successful in outlining Agnico-Eagle’s LaRonde deposit, which is the largest deposit in Canada, are the same guys looking after the Sudbury Contact exploration. There is a unique expertise at Sudbury and I think that is what ends up creating value in the long run. Exploration is high risk but the risks are minimized when you have good successful people and financial resources to move forward and that is what Sudbury Contact has.” disclaimers |
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