Aris Mining

Great to see you. How does this thing work? Is this the forward or back? You don’t know? Yes, it is. Okay. Thanks very much, Don, then. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. A quick overview of Aris Mining as we are today after about five years. We are two operating mines in Colombia, Segovia and Marmato. We have the pre-feasibility finished on the project Soto Norte, getting ourselves ready to submit for environmental approval. And in Guyana, we have Toroparu, where we should complete the pre-feasibility this quarter.

So in total, our reserves are 9.3 million ounces, and that of course does not include Toroparu yet. And our resources are nearly 22 million ounces. Gold production in 2006 was 257,000. This year, we’re guiding between 300 and 350. Looking forward, when we have Segovia and Marmato both expanded, we should have a steady state production of about 500,000 ounces a year. And of course, if we brought the other two online, we’d be up to approximately a million.

When we look at these four assets, we can see the two, Segovia and Marmato, who are now in the process of… Segovia is… We’ve already expanded it, we’re ramping it up. Ramp up should be complete during the course of next year, hopefully about the half year. It takes time to do the underground development, but it also takes longer to bring our small miners along in parallel with us. But we should be there by about halfway through next year. Marmato is scheduled for its first gold pour the last quarter of this year. We will have it fully operational by about February, March, and then it’ll be able to ramp up to its 200,000 ounces. So as I say, those bring us to 500,000 ounces.

Toroparu, pre-feasibility complete. We’re in the licensing process now with the government. Hopefully in the early part of next year, we can make a construction decision there. Soto Norte, the famous or infamous Soto Norte, we have completely redesigned. We have the pre-feasibility study for it, and we have finished all the work we have to do on environmental measurement and recording, and we’re about to be in a position now, particularly with the change of government in Colombia, to be able to submit that fairly shortly.

But one of the interesting things about these assets is that Segovia, which has been operating for about 120 years, Marmato has a mine life of over 20 years. Toroparu has a mine life of over 20 years, as does Soto Norte. I think I’m the only asset around here in Aris who has a mine life of less than 20 years. So we have fairly good grade assets, and we have long life assets. Two in operation, and two we’re putting together over the next few years to bring us up to the infamous and famous a million ounces.

Now, looking a little bit more at Segovia. Proven and probable reserves of 1.5, but as I say, it’s been operating for about 120 years. Also, about 30% to 35% of mining comes from our small mining partners, which I’ll discuss later. They are not included in our reserve base. So resources, 3.6 million. Production up towards 300,000 ounces, and a steady state will be 300,000 ounces. And all in sustaining margin over the last twelve months of just over 600 million.

Excitingly, the expansion of Marmato. Marmato historic was a small flotation plant of about 20,000 to 25,000 ounces a year. In our tenement above it, there were a lot of small illegal miners. Below it, there’s a large industrial deposit. We’re now building the CIP plant. That plant should be ready for its first gold pour later this year, before the end of the year. We have already got the ramp down to it, so we have access to ore, and we are stockpiling ore ready for that. It’ll take us a couple of months into next year to get it fully operational, and then hopefully by the latter part of the year, we’re up to about 200,000 ounces from Marmato at the flotation plant and the CIP plant.

Now additionally, through an arbitration that we solved last year with the government, we also are working with the mining agency to formalize miners above us. And if we can bring that material down to Marmato as well, we have a flotation capability of dealing with it. That may give us over a couple of years’ time, another 30,000 to 50,000 ounces. So we’ll have upwards of over 200,000 ounces from Marmato in a year or so’s time.

Stepping outside Colombia, we have the Toroparu project which we acquired, which was part of the acquisition of Gran Colombia. When we acquired it, the first thing we did was we stopped construction at that time. We weren’t sure of the numbers. We weren’t sure of the resources. We redid the resources at I think about half of them, and then we are finishing now. Before Christmas, we will have finished a PEA. Sorry, pre-feasibility. The PEA which we finished was 5 million ounces, 235,000 ounces a year, over 20-year mine life. Initial capital of about 820, which I suspect may have gone up a little bit as things do since the last couple of years. We’ll find out in a week or so’s time. It had at $3,000, I think it was, gold, an NPV of 25%. So that project will be finished and ready to go.

From a licensing point of view, we already have the environment license. We have applied for the construction license, and we’re partway through the discussions with the government. They have reviewed everything. I would hope by about the same time we finish the pre-feasibility, we also get the approvals from the government, which should put us in a position to make a construction decision early next year.

The fourth project, Soto Norte. I don’t know if people know the history of this. This was a very large gold project that Ike Batista put together many years ago. Mubadala lent them about… sorry, $1.2 billion, spent goodness knows what on it. We acquired a 25% interest three or four years ago and took over the management of the project, and we rapidly came to the conclusion that the project that was being built was just too large, too big, too risky, too big a footprint, and quite honestly, too expensive for anybody to handle. It included such things as a seven and a half kilometer between tunnels in the Andes, and the anticipation was a tunnel boring machine would be taken up there and would be quite a nightmare. We just came to the conclusion it wasn’t a practical project.

We reduced its scale to about the scale that we’re operating now at Segovia. We reshaped its mine plan, so we weren’t taking every ounce out. We had a sensible mine plan in terms of cash generation. In fact, our model showed we would be generating more cash in the first five years than the large project. But very importantly, the project had been rejected by the communities. A great deal of protest against it. So in preparation for this, what we did is we set about taking the mayors and community leaders and the governor… Sorry, from the Soto Norte area to Segovia to sit them down with our small miners who operate in partnership with us, and we help as to how it would work. They came back very enthusiastically wanting the project. So we now have community support rather than community opposition.

As I say, the other thing we did, we changed the whole footprint of the project and are now in a position to be able to submit that shortly. But we’re also planning to build 120% of the capacity that we need for the project. The extra 20% we’re building to allow the small miners to have a clean processing facility. So we’re working with our local communities. We’re working the way the government wants us to work, and it’s a project now that is getting a great deal of acceptance. Hopefully, as I say, the approval process can start, and we can then look to see about construction. A well-defined project.

I spoke previously about our contracting miner partners. This is a model we built up over the last few years, starting at Segovia, picking up from where Gran Colombia had started. And we’ve now formalized in total about 4,000 miners to work with us. I’m not sure you know the background very briefly. In Colombia, 85% of the gold is produced by small miners, most of which are old families, old traditional miners, some are the bad guys. But 85%, this is 350,000 small informal miners in the country. We have formalized about 4,000 so far, and if you follow our plans through, which we’re working through with the Ministry of Labor, if we include Soto Norte, we can get to about 8,000 formalized miners.

This not only means that they have social security, they pay their taxes, but they now have a great deal of protection from society as to how they operate, and they do work with us as businessmen. We help them design their mine plans. We help them form their legal structures. We help them in health and safety. Sometimes we lend them money. We pay them cash when they deliver the material based upon the tons, the grade, and the gold price. So this gives us a tremendous community support. And it is this process that we followed at Segovia. We’ve introduced it to Marmato very successfully, and we carry on doing so, which is why we got the arbitration with the government. And we’ll also carry on doing it at Soto Norte, which is why the climate has now changed to support us. So we have a clear path from our two mines now to 500,000 ounces, followed by a clear path to potentially a million ounces.

I think there’s one thing to say when you look at the Aris stock. We are significantly discounted, I think, primarily for two reasons. The first is the stage of development, which to some extent is inevitable. And the second is undoubtedly risk associated with Colombia. Colombia has not been a mining-friendly country. When exploration development was advancing in Chile and Peru, we had all the bad guys and all the bad movies going on in Colombia. After that, the environmentalists took over. After that, the left wing took over. It’s been a progressive series of steps like that. Therefore, the opportunity is quite extraordinary.

The present government has stated and has demonstrated that they now support mining. Since the election in the middle of August, we’ve had the Minister of Mines, the Minister of Environment, the Minister of Labor, and their vice ministers all visit Segovia and Marmato. We are getting tremendous support, and I think the industry will be getting tremendous support, to such an extent I start to worry about how difficult it is gonna be to get geologists, because all the big guys are gonna fly in there and do a lot of exploration. So the mark is getting tighter for us in that point of view. But the government is certainly supporting us, and I think will also support us in Soto Norte. They take the attitude mining is one of the things they have to put right in the country from a social, small miner point of view, and also economically. So it is getting, and will continue to get, a very, very big push. And I think over time, that will not only give us the assets we want, that Colombian discount will disappear as the other discount disappears. So that’s where we stand today. And I know I’ve run out too quickly, but nevertheless, that’s the story. That’s the company as is today.

Thank you very much, Neil. So we do have time for a few questions. Okay, so Neil, thank you for the update on Toroparu. It looks like it’s moving along nicely. As you approach a construction decision next year, waiting for some milestones from the government, how is the workforce in Guyana, and would you expect a ramp-up of labor to be somewhat uneventful, or any comments on that? Thank you.

It’s not gonna be easy. It is not a mining country. It’s a country that’s seen huge investment in oil and gas recently. It’s a country that lacks infrastructure, and we are out there. We’re about 180 kilometers away. We have to build a long road. We will be doing two things. We’ve already started putting a management team together. We’ve already started talking to EPCM, CM, potential construction help. Some of the other mining companies have brought labor in from other countries. We could perhaps bring labor in from Colombia. We have enough guys who can drive trucks around Colombia. It is going to be one of the bigger issues to handle. If we plan now, we’re in a good position to do it. But yes, it is an issue.

Okay. Thank you. And looking at Marmato, you’re coming up to a key milestone at year-end, declaring commercial production, and then you’ve got a steady ramp-up through next year. Investors are always thinking, “Well, what’s next?” And is there any scope to potentially maybe increase the mill throughput even further than you already have done, or any other levers that you can pull to enhance the economics, say, in 2028 and beyond?

Well, we’ve got some amazing milestones between now and the end of the year. [laughs] We’ve got, I think, proving that Toroparu has got its license. We’ve got the pre-feasibility in Toroparu. We’ve got, I think, seeing the government taking Soto Norte seriously. We have the first gold pour. We have Segovia ramp up. All those things between now and the end of the year, and there’s only three months, but we are calmly confident that we’ll achieve this year’s milestones. When we look forward to next year, we see the ramp-up of Segovia, again, Marmato. Hopefully we’ve started Toroparu, and hopefully not long afterwards, we’re in a position where Soto Norte can be taken forward as well. Okay. And that’ll keep us quite busy for a little bit of time, I think.

Yeah. Very cattle’s rich. [laughs] I’ll just poll the audience again. So we have a new administration in Colombia as of this summer, and I’m wondering if you’ve had a chance to meet with them or what the read-through might be on your operations in Soto Norte with this new administration.

Last week, I met three ministers, three vice ministers, and three heads of agencies. I think that gives a very clear indication of their intent. Now let’s see if they are capable. They have obviously decided what they were doing when they were in opposition. They are not working things out now. They have a very clear plan, and they would appear to be implementing it. I can’t say more than that. Okay. But they’re very determined people.

Okay. And what would the read-through be to Soto Norte? Maybe if you could just talk about a potential timeline for the next milestones at Soto Norte. And is there the potential that you might even be developing two projects at once?

I honestly don’t know the timeline of Soto Norte. I would expect… Well, we have to go through the six-week consultation progress. So maybe the soonest we put it is three or four months, but about roundabout give or take the end of the year. How long does it take? And a project normally takes 18 months in Colombia. Soto Norte has been at it for 10 years, on the other extreme. These people will not take 18 months. Okay? If all being well, yes, we would be in a situation, if we were able to do so, of building two at the same time. And let me just address that, if I may. We do actually have the financial resources to do that, but today we do not have the human resources to do that. If it was coming nearby and it’s looking serious, we would have a lot of work to do organizing ourselves to do it.

Okay. Honest answer. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Neil Woodyer, Chair and CEO of Aris Mining. Thank you.