GOLD: A QUARTERLY FINANCIAL REVIEW OF CANADA’S LARGEST PRODUCERS / 3 Geotech_Earlug_2016_Alt2.pdf 1 2016-06-24 4:27:20 PM
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Gold, silver, copper and zinc are favoured targets in the northern Andean region / 9–12
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AUGUST 21–SEPTEMBER 3, 2017 / VOL. 103 ISSUE 17 / GLOBAL MINING NEWS · SINCE 1915 / $3.99 / WWW.NORTHERNMINER.COM
Barrick’s Dushnisky on miner’s rebound, JVs INTERVIEW
| Restructuring efforts pay off with leaner, more adaptable company
BY LIAM ZISMAN SPECIAL TO THE NORTHERN MINER
A
t the Canadian Mining Symposium hosted by The Northern Miner at Canada House in London, U.K., in May, session moderator Bill Whitelaw, executive vice-president of Northern Miner parent company Glacier Media, sat down with Kelvin Dushnisky, president of Barrick Gold (TSX: ABX; NYSE: ABX) to discuss the company’s restructuring into a leaner, more focused gold miner, and its new joint ventures at operations around the world. The following is an edited transcript of the conversation. Bill Whitelaw: Peter Munk formed Barrick Gold in 1983, and within 25 years, it was the world’s biggest gold producer. But growth brings all kinds of challenges in terms of projects that go over budget and top-of-market acquisitions. It’s part of managing those growth pains that Barrick has instituted its Back to the Future strategy, which — like all good companies — looks back on their founding and brings that into the future. Maybe you could reflect on the success of that strategy?
Workers at a section of the Rail-Veyor system at Agnico Eagle Mines’ Goldex underground gold mine near Val-d’Or, Quebec. PHOTO BY JOHN CUMMING
Agnico declares commercial production at Goldex’s Deep 1 SITE VISIT
| Pioneering use of Rail-Veyor system to transport material underground
BY JOHN CUMMING jcumming@northernminer.com VAL-D’OR, QUEBEC
W
ith the declaration of first commercial production from the Deep 1 project, Agnico Eagle Mines (TSX: AGE: NYSE: AGE) has entered a new era in the life of its wholly owned Goldex underground gold mine, just 2.5 km west of Val-d’Or, Quebec.
The Deep 1 project centres on the D-1 (or Upper D) zone. It is 850 to 1,200 metres below surface, and will be mined at a rate of 6,000 tonnes per day, producing 100,000 oz. gold annually from 2018 through 2024 at a cash cost of US$610 to US$630 per ounce. The production from D-1 adds to ongoing production from the MMx zone, which is 50 to 370 metres from surface, and the deeper E zone, which lies just above and offset from
the D-1 zone at 670 to 850 metres deep, and is accessible from the bottom of the mine’s 800-metre Main shaft. Geologically, there is a sequence of steeply dipping mafic to ultramafic rocks that underlie the Goldex property and have been intruded by a large, table-shaped quartz-diorite body known as the “Goldex granodiorite” that dips steeply northeast. See GOLDEX / 2
“FOR A LONG TIME, BARRICK WAS THE ONLY COMPANY WITH AN A-RATED BALANCE SHEET...WE HAVE BEEN USING THE ‘BACK TO THE FUTURE’ ANALOGY TO RESTORE DISCIPLINE. ” KELVIN DUSHNISKY PRESIDENT, BARRICK GOLD
an untimely acquisition, when our debt became too high. There were a lot of issues and challenges we had to face. Intensively, over the last two and a half years, we have been restructuring the business. We have been using the Back to the Future analogy in restoring the discipline to the business. See BARRICK GOLD / 14 PM40069240
Kelvin Dushnisky: When Barrick started, our iconic founder Peter Munk was a visionary. The first acquisition he made — when Barrick was a small company — was Camflo Mines, and with Camflo came real talent, including Bob Smith — another legend in mining. The way Peter and Bob structured the business was a clear division of labour: Peter was responsible for financial aspects and strategy, Bob was responsible as an operator for overseeing the mines and making sure the right talent was in place, and making sure the operations ran well — which they did. The model worked very well. For a long time, Barrick was the only company in the space with an A-rated balance sheet. It had strong financial discipline and projects were built on time and on budget, and that model worked for a long time. But the reality is that if you go back several years, we lost our way in some sense. Like a lot of companies, we started chasing production — the number of ounces as opposed to quality of ounces. You mentioned
EV REVOLUTION: FRIEDLAND PITCHES COPPER, COBALT / 5
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