CANADIAN MINING SYMPOSIUM: PHOTO HIGHLIGHTS FROM LONDON / 6–7 Geotech_Earlug_2016_Alt2.pdf 1 2016-06-24 4:27:20 PM
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JUNE 10–23, 2019 / VOL. 105 ISSUE 12 / GLOBAL MINING NEWS · SINCE 1915 / $3.99 / WWW.NORTHERNMINER.COM
Success starts with orebody quality, Barrick’s Mark Bristow says INTERVIEW
| Canada risks becoming ‘irrelevant’ due to ‘promotion and short-termism’
IRON ORE
| Secures 100% of Bloom Lake ahead of tabling expansion study
BY TRISH SAYWELL tsaywell@northernminer.com LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
M
ark Bristow, officially installed as president and CEO of Barrick Gold (TSX: ABX; NYSE: GOLD) on New Year’s Day, sat down with The Northern Miner for a fireside chat at The Northern Miner’s Canadian Mining Symposium at Canada House in London, U.K., on May 22, 2019, to talk about his vision for the company and the gold mining industry more broadly since Barrick’ blockbuster merger with Randgold Resources — the smaller, African-focused gold miner he founded and led until the merger. The Northern Miner: You’ve been a critic of the gold mining industry for many years. You said it was undisciplined and there was poor return on invested capital. But Randgold Resources was always an outlier: you always focused on the geology, it was always about the orebody. And your guiding principle was that an orebody had to have at least 3 million oz. gold and a 20% internal rate of return at a long-term gold price of US$1,000 an ounce. Now that you’re heading up the bigger company, Barrick Gold, with assets all over the world and its own challenges, how do you see that going forward? Do you have different strategic filters at Barrick than you did at Randgold?
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Mark Bristow: We have introduced as part of this transaction [the idea of] tier-one assets — which is effectively around the top-10 assets in the world. When you look at a 15% return at a US$1,200 per oz. gold price, a lot of people in this industry don’t know what it takes to make a 15% return. If you have a 7 million oz. plus gold deposit that produces 400,000 oz. a year, and you have to invest
Champion Iron positions for organic growth
BY DAVID PERRI dperri@northernminer.com
A
fter a milestone-rich year in which Champion Iron (TSX: CIA; ASX: CIA) restarted the Bloom Lake iron ore mine in Quebec’s portion of the Labrador Trough, the company has executed a series of transactions to better position itself for growth amid a global supply shortage in high-grade iron ore. In May, Champion finalized a preferred share offering for $185 million with Quebec pension fund manager Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. The company also secured a fully underwritten, US$200-million credit facility with The Bank of Nova Scotia and Société
Barrick Gold CEO Mark Bristow speaks at the 2019 Canadian Mining Symposium in London, U.K.
“WHEN YOU COMBINE THE BEST ASSETS WITH GREAT PEOPLE, THERE’S NOT MUCH TO DO TO DELIVER QUALITY RETURNS, BECAUSE IT COMES NATURALLY.” MARK BRISTOW PRESIDENT AND CEO, BARRICK GOLD
US$2 billion to reach a 15% return, you have got to have a US$570 per oz. all-in sustaining cost. So to get up to 20% when you have got very big assets is difficult, but it’s still a discipline, and anyone who can deliver 15% real returns — after tax for Canadians, because you always use before-tax
numbers — it’s a world-class asset, and we need more of those. And the principle of any mining is that your revenue is in your orebody. If you start with a highquality orebody, it doesn’t have to be high grade. It can be lower grade in a pit with no strip ratio. But if it’s a high-quality orebody,
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you’ll always end up with a better return. If you start with a really underwhelming orebody, you’re never going to make any money. You’re going to do what the industry is very good at: you’re going to do really reasonably well in the peaks of the cyclical market, and you’re going to go bust in the trough. The point is that you can’t get there if you don’t have partnerships with your various stakeholders, whether they are governments, investors or fund managers. I’ve always said that we’re in an industry which is by its very nature looking to long-term decisions, long-term money, long-term partnerships.
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October 7–10, 2019 • SEG2019.org
DIAMONDS: INTERVIEW WITH LUCARA’S EIRA THOMAS / 3
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