Savannah Resources Plc (LON:SAV) Chief Executive Officer David Archer caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the intersection of high grade copper, zinc and gold at Blocks 4 and 5 in Oman and Savannah’s plans for development
Q1: David, last time we spoke you’d started drilling at your high priority targets in Block 4 and today you’ve announced the intersection of high grade copper, zinc and gold at Blocks 4 and 5. Can you describe the significance of these drill results?
A1: Well Oman’s always been a great destination for high grade copper mines and these results just confirm that attraction. Grade is king these days, grade really makes for lower unit costs and grades like this, of in excess of 6%, are something like 7 times the global average for new mine development so really this only underscores the appeal of these deposits from a development point of view. The other key element about our announcement is the excellent associated precious metals credits, there’s one intersection there with both high grade copper and gold credits of up to 1.9 grams per tonne and of course, these drilling results also go towards helping provide us with information that will help generate a JORC resource in due course.
Q2: What’s the next milestone for your copper projects in Oman?
A2: Well I think probably the next major milestone will be the definition of exploration targets for our deposits in Oman and these exploration targets are really the first stage estimates of volumes of grade and I think it’ll be very important to get that information out so that the investment community can start shaping up their thoughts around the value of Savannah.
Q3: What are Savannah Resources’ plans for development?
A3: I think, despite the rather tough copper price environment, these sorts of deposits really have a great deal of development appeal. We’re looking at bringing these deposits into production by late 2017 which I can assure you is an absolutely blistering pace for new mine development, most new mine developments take something like 7 years to bring into production. Of course a late 2017 start would be quite good, we’d be expecting copper prices to be improving at that stage so I think it will be a developing sort of sweet spot for new developments like this in particular new high grade development. The other sort of key feature about what we’re doing in Oman is the fact that there’s excellent local infrastructure, both ports, very good roads, there’s a copper smelter there and these mines already have had some sort amount of development on them with portals and underground access so it means these deposits are very well poised.
Q4: So do you think 2017 is a realistic target?
A4: We sort of think so. We think it’s aggressive but we’re getting very encouraging results and we’re sort of looking forward to high tempo of activity in 2016 to frame us up for that 2017 target.
