Great Basin Gold Ltd. (fka GBGLF)

[amarksp]

Ferdi Dippenaar, CEO, Great Basin Mines
Allan Seccombe
Posted:
[miningmx.com] -- FERDI Dippenaar, newly appointed CEO of Great Basin Mines, was intercepted by Miningmx over lunch during the Indaba Mining Conference. This is what he had to say...
http://www.miningmx.com/events/indaba_2006/886652.htm


MININGMX: Ferdi, what are you up to now?

FERDI DIPPENAAR: Well I’m enjoying myself with Great Basin Mines, getting the company up and running. Alot of excitement, quite a challenge, but I’m really enjoying myself.

MININGMX: Ok. What exactly are challenges that you are trying to overcome at the moment?

FERDI DIPPENAAR: Well it’s getting our project feasibility badge, it’s a good project, but we need to finalise the numbers and of course start building it. We need the production, we need to show what the mine can deliver. That’s definitely what we need to do. The other one is resolving our disputes with our partner Hecla on our Ivanhoe project which is a lot further advanced than the Burnstone project.

MININGMX: What kind of grades are you seeing at Ivanhoe?

FERDI DIPPENAAR: Well, we only have one intersection and on both sides there is a decline, and on the one sides it was 40g per ton and the other side 4g per ton. But that’s the nature of the ore body. Very typical of Nevada underground, but there are more intersections to come, more sampling and who knows maybe some good news.

MININGMX: Will we see any corporate action from you guys?

FERDI DIPPENAAR: Early days, but we would love to do some absolutely.

MININGMX: Are you finally getting your feet under the table and settling in quite nicely after Harmony?

FERDI DIPPENAAR: It’s been a month, a good month. It’s been a month of learning what’s happened, not just in the company, but with the two projects. But it is also, of course, finding my feet. But it’s all good stuff.

MININGMX: What’s the first project you were mentioning?

FERDI DIPPENAAR: Burnstone.

MININGMX: So where are you exactly in the project. How far along?

FERDI DIPPENAAR: The pre-feasibility was completed in November and it’s really firming up the numbers for a bankable feasibility. It’s an orebody of about 3 million ounces with a recovery grade of about 5g/ton. It’s shallow, from 250m down to 700m. That’s area one of the first phase of the orebody of the mine. It’s a decent cost with a decent margin.

MININGMX: Have you got any ballpark figures on the cost to develop the mine there?

FERDI DIPPENAAR: I’m talking pre-feasibility now, so it’s really early days. It was $92m at a cash cost of about $250–$260 per ounce, which isn’t bad. It is very comparable with anything else at that grade. But I think it’s the fact that it’s a shallow orebody that makes it quite exciting, it’s easy to assess and quick to assess. It’s like building a deep level mine in South Africa: it’s a deep mine which we start assuming to take a decline, probably in about three years time we will have a decent gold sample of the infrastructure in place to start mining somewhere.

MININGMX: Really that quick?

FERDI DIPPENAAR: That quick and that makes a difference.

MININGMX: How will you guys raise that kind of money?

FERDI DIPPENAAR: Well if you break it down in phases, we’ve got some cash in the bank, Canadian dollars. There is really no need to go out there and raise cash or issue a significant number of shares. And then, of course, as we make good progress with our Ivanhoe project which we’ll deliver into production a lot sooner.

MININGMX: What kind of figures are you looking at in terms of capex and production dates, and so on?

FERDI DIPPENAAR: At the moment it’s approximately $55-60m to bring Burnstone into production. The production rate, remember these are pre-feasibility figures, is about 165,000 oz/year. High grade, low cost very, very typical of narrow vein mines.

MININGMX: Is that going to be underground?

FERDI DIPPENAAR: It is underground, yes. There was a surface that has been mined. What we are doing now is putting down a decline. We have two breakaways and we have established sites, we have got drilling machines coming in February to target certain sections of the orebody and additional ore bodies, and try to convert those resources into about a million ounces at the moment.

MININGMX: What is it like being your own boss where you’re the man calling the shots now?

FERDI DIPPENAAR: Well I think in the Harmony environment we were playing in that kind of situation where you were typically accountable for what you looked after. It is different, it’s exciting. It’s what I have been looking forward to doing. As they say, you can always regret what you have done. But if you haven’t done it, what is there to regret? And that’s really what I’m going out to do.