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Posted by Anonymous Sender on October 19, 2007, 6:56 am
Ferdi Dippenaar: CEO, Great Basin Gold
10/19/2007 6:48 AM
Ferdi Dippenaar: CEO, Great Basin Gold
Posted: Friday , 19 Oct 2007
MINEWEB: Well, let's hope that Ferdi Dippenaar is with us now. Ferdi, you're in
the States somewhere?
FERDI DIPPENAAR: I'm in New York Alec.
MINEWEB: Congratulations - best-performing gold stock in the world in the year
so far to date. It guess it's an
indication that you've also been pretty good at marketing your stock to gold
buyers around the world, because Great
Basin Gold is not the biggest.
FERDI DIPPENAAR: No, it's not. I wasn't aware of the fact that it was the
best-performing stock, but it's good to
hear. It's a good time to be around as well, Alec, I think. You know, the fact
that the company by its nature is a growth
company, it's an emerging producer, so that's typically when the value gets
added. The marketing, of course, is going
well. I think the positioning of the company, just compared to some of the
producers, the larger producers [with]
mature cost problems, increasing costs, not sure where the next ounce is coming
from. I would like to believe that it's
a good story, it's a nice fresh story and it's a growth story.
MINEWEB: We had an interesting discussion with the head of safety at the Chamber
of Mines today, and that's not
a good story - the fact that in 2003 the South African miners worked out that
they could reduce fatalities by 20% a
year. Not in a single year since then has that been achieved. And now the whole
story with safety is coming very
much into the front area. You've got one of your mines here in South Africa. Are
you finding that this is becoming an
issue, perhaps?
FERDI DIPPENAAR: Well, I don't think it's becoming an issue. We actually made it
an issue in the design of the
mine. I think the one thing that works in our favour is that we can actually,
from the start - because it's a new mine, it's
actually designed for safety - instil a culture of safety with the people, set a
challenge as well, which we have by
saying that we will not kill anybody, an employee working for us at our mine in
Burnstone. We have a similar
challenge at our operations in Hollister. But again, both mines are being
developed at the moment so you can
actually design for safety as you bring it into production.
MINEWEB: Are you seeing this, though, going to be a growing issue in South
Africa?
FERDI DIPPENAAR: There is no doubt, no doubt, and you know I'm looking forward
to the day, Alec, where one of
our managers at the mine actually start the CV proudly by saying in the time
that he was a manager none of his
employees were either seriously injured or lost their lives in the operation of
the mine. And I think it's by starting with
that focus we will address the issue where it matters most.
MINEWEB: Ferdi, what are you doing in the US right now?
FERDI DIPPENAAR: I'm actually on a roadshow. I'm speaking to institutions and
investors. We raised $149m in
April with the understanding that I try and get back to shareholders every six
months, inform them what we've done,
what you plans are for the immediate future, and of course in the medium term,
the growth, the bit of blue sky that's
out there. We've had an excellent reception. It's a good time to be around,
especially where the gold price is at the
moment.
MINEWEB: $85m of that $149.5m injected into your cash holdings, so presumably
you're not asking for any more
money at this point.
FERDI DIPPENAAR: Absolutely not. If we have a look at our cash position since we
received our US$37m from our
BEE partners in South Africa, we actually have in excess of $100m in cash. We
see some production from Hollister
next year, which would see some free cash flow. We've got project funding in
place without any hedging
commitments. The company's well positioned. We raised capital, we raised more
than what we required at the time. I
think in hindsight it was a perfect decision. So it's all about delivery at the
moment.
MINEWEB: Ferdi Dippenaar, the chief executive of Great Basin Gold.
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