Greatland Gold PLC (AIM:GGP, OTC:GRLGF) CEO Shaun Day talks through a very successful first month in charge following its acquisition of Telfer and Havieron projects
Shaun Day: I think the headline is our strong ounce production, about 30,000oz of gold, including the copper.
That's about 33,000oz of gold equivalent. And that was achieved in 27 days and we are really pleased with that outcome.
On top of that, we've got 500,000oz at surface across the high-grade and the low-grade stockpile and a really healthy cash balance.
We’ve got $145 million in the bank, plus an undrawn debt facility for another $75 million.
That gives us the liquidity we want—over $220 million—to execute the future mine plan.
And that manifests in all the [mine] life extensions we're looking at, at Telfer.
Proactive: That's a great production figure result. What were the key drivers?
Shaun Day: The work the team's putting around the integration has been huge. It’s something that a number of us have experience with, but they’re always challenging.
But I think we’ve been navigating that really well. We did a lot of due diligence, so we knew what we were going in for.
I think a lot of what we’ve seen is as anticipated. Having said that, one of the positive variances to that due diligence is just the receptiveness and the culture at the site to being part of Greatland.
And again, this is a credit to the site team to deliver this performance, which is about 33% above the Telfer mine plan that we disclosed in the admission document.
So we’re really pleased. Albeit its just 27 days, it’s super encouraging. But you know, one swallow a summer doesn’t make.
So it’s a measured optimism. Lots more to do. But certainly, it’s nice to be on this part of the curve.
Proactive: Outside of the production results, what were some of the other highlights from December?
Shaun Day: In addition to that production, we’ve been able to finalize that stockpile at surface.
It’s a bit more than we expected it to be. Across the low grade and the high grade, it’s over 500,000oz at surface.
I cannot think of another asset that would have that kind of 500,000oz already at surface with no mining costs with obviously, the financial benefit of that.
But again, what it does to our mine flexibility and de-risking, we think is important.
The mine life extension, I think, is looking really positive in that West Dome open pit.
We’ve already got those drilled out, stage eight extension and stage seven. We continue to do work on them and bring that into our mine planning.
Certainly it’s been encouraging to date. And then in the underground, that is the West Dome deeps.
Under that same mining area, we really like what we’re seeing there.
We’ve had the rigs on that and are getting some good results. So again, that gives us optimism about what we can do heading into the future.
And speaking of the future, although there’s a great focus on Telfer, of course, with today’s announcement, the jewel in the crown for us is Havieron, and we’re walking toward that feasibility study, which will get out in the second half of the year.
So overall, we think we’ve got some really good outcomes. And we’ll continue to focus on delivering them.
And then we get to augment that into the second half, say June of the next quarter, with that ASX cross-listing. And we think that’s advantageous to shareholders as well.
Proactive: What else should we be keeping an eye out for moving forward?
Shaun Day: It’s going to be a huge year for Greatland. We completed the acquisition of Telfer and Havieron and consolidated the ownership of those two assets under a single roof.
There’s lots to do to create shareholder value. So we are pleased with our announcement today.
We expect later this quarter to get out our March JORC resource on Telfer. I think that’s an important announcement.
We’ll then get our first full quarterly out in April with that March quarter. And that will be a very detailed overview and give us a bit more of a run rate.
We want to see that ASX listing, as I mentioned, probably expected in that June quarter. Plus, get out a JORC reserve, demonstrating that mine life extension at Telfer.
Then sometime in that second half, bring out the Havieron feasibility study.
So really, in a matter of every couple of weeks, we want to have some more pretty important announcements coming out for our shareholders.
The team, in addition to doing that integration, is working on all these other initiatives. But we couldn’t be happier.