For the NEWBIES.
John is the President of SGCP. I wrote him an e-mail suggesting that we polish and cut our diamonds to get a better price for them. I signed it with my e-mail and phone number. Our PRESIDENT called be to, in his words, "treat you with respect".
here are my notes......
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John Called ME just now and we talked for over half an hour. What a stand up guy he is! He read my e-mail (I posted it here this morning) and wanted to call and answer my questions and treat me with respect because it looked like what I had to say was well thought out.
Pro-truck was right when he said that Diamonds are controlled by the Lebanese and that it is next to impossible to get any changes to this. Also, the sale of diamonds doesn’t employ a lot of locals like farming does. If we were to find a very large diamond, then sure, we might then try to get an export license (extremely expense) and get it out.
Are we dredging gravel yet? YES, in some areas, others are very close. His last update from Doug was Saturday and all dredges MAY be in gravel now, but not confirmed yet. Part of the problem is that the river deposits fresh sand overnight over the last days dredging area so the first part of the day is spent removing last nights deposits.
Do we have 6 more dredges from more JV's considering joining us? YES. They are waiting to hear from the one JV dredge we have now to see how well he does. He is doing well and feels safe and should be giving a good report to his friends that are probably going to join us next season.
It sounds to me like we have SO much mining areas that we could be mining virgin areas for the next 20 years with 30 dredges.... YES, that's true. That is why Doug concentrated on securing as many areas as possible early in the game. We pay rent on some areas just to keep other mining interest (China and others) from going there.
I asked about our discussion over the FR and the 170 g/ton clarification. It was 170 grams per ton of concentrate. He said that is really small, but gold is there. The gold in the overburden isn’t where we are concentrating our efforts. It would take several dredges a couple of days to produce a ton of concentrate, so don’t get thrown off by that 170 grams. It’s the gravel where the gold is and where we are going.
We talked about all the good things SGCP is doing for the locals and that Doug and John always bring lot of clothes and supplies with them to give away. Doug and John sometimes are the very first white people that have visited some of these villages. He has big plans for the expansion of the agriculture. I won’t disclose the number because I don’t think John was ready for that to be public, but the number of acres he is considering farming 3 years from now is HUGE. Think of multiplying the current acreage several times over.
I asked about our becoming profitable this year…. I couldn’t get him to commit to an answer because it hasn’t happened yet, but it sounded like it would be hard for us not to be profitable.
With the profits, is it true that he is planning on buying a smelter? That got him going on a wish list of things he’d like to buy! And yes, a smelter is one of them, along with tractors, harvesters, wash plants, dredges, etc.
I told him how much we appreciated the pictures and asked if he could post some new ones sometime. It didn’t sound like it would happen soon, but now he knows we’d like to see more. Part of the problem is the lack of power and the difficulty to recharge cameras.
I have NO DOUBT that our future looks bright!
GO SGCP!
Charlie
