Frasier's Transcript

[Bottle Rocket - Liam]

This rather raw, and is presented as seen, Transcribed by Adobe Premier Pro. I have not read the output but should help the eager beavers. the bits in bold are GGP related but may have missed bits, - Back to bed! -

EDIT: Given the system picked up "Colin Baxter" and NOT Callum, I would advise serious caution in using any part of this as a reference to anything Newcrest have said - The transcript is inaccurate, but could be used as a suggested guide to what Fraiser may have been saying.
Liam

Fraser McCorquodale, general manager of exploration from Newcrest Mining.
Good morning everyone and welcome to my talk. First of all, I'd just like to say it's good to be back at Diggers. We've been based in Melbourne. We haven't been allowed out for the last two years, so it is good to be here. In fact, I gave this talk last year from my house in Melbourne and I had three teenage or not three university-age students meant to be studying. And let me tell you, they give you pretty harsh feedback at the end of your presentations. A lot more than this. So look what Newcrest does at Diggers is we really take the opportunity to tell our growth story. You know, we present in a lot of forums around the world, but we think that this is an opportunity here to get this message across. And we think it's a pretty good story. I should obviously point out that I'm a geologist, so it is really good for diggers that your first talk is by a geologist because I think as we know, exploration is the life lifeline of this industry. The good news is there's been some great discoveries in Australia in the last few years.

We know obviously Great Land and Newcrest have run and then what the Grays doing up in the Pilbara is pretty fantastic. So they're there to be made. But we've got to keep them going. Otherwise this forum in ten years will be a bit small. Our usual disclaimer slide. There'll be forward looking statements. Also, there's resources reserves, I think I mentioned and there's competent person statements.
There's also a whole bunch of footnotes on slide, so I'd advise you to read those. In fact, I think there's one slide. There's more footnotes than actual content of the slide. So before I start, I'd just like to acknowledge the, the, the Wonga said the traditional owners of where we are here today. And we'd also like to acknowledge the madu who are the traditional owners and the custodians of the lands at which we explore with great land in in around the Paterson.


We'd like to pay our respects to the past, present and future elders. So look, when I was preparing for this, we actually first presented at Diggers back in 2017, and it was a period where Newcrest had just come out of, you know, a period of not a lot of growth. We bottle he went through a period where we didn't do much and then about 1617 that the Sandy Bismark the company said like they've got to get moving again.
And we gave our first talk then and when I look back now is a lot of little cartoons and not a lot of not a lot of beef behind the slides. But it was a story that we were telling what we can say now is we've succeeded strategically and reposition our portfolio. So jump back to 2017. We had three tier one assets and our growth was focused in Australia, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and West Africa.
And in fact we were spending from an exploration point of view, more money in West Africa than anywhere else. And I think we had one project in Nicaragua, so we just stuck our toe into the Americas. Fast forward now and we've now we've been successful in exposing ourselves to a large number or at least 61 assets. And we've done that through the recent acquisition of Bruce Check in in Canada, the joint venture, Red Cross, also in Canada and our exposure to fruit alternative in Ecuador.

So it is a major shift for the company into the Americas. Our growth now is in the Americas, Australia and obviously Papua New Guinea will be besides the new provinces that we've got, we continue to look for new opportunities in our own backyard. So this is our strategy and it's a pretty simple strategy. It's all about putting our foot on Taiwan assets with the aim of transforming those into long term mines.
And that's what Newcrest is about. And both Red Kris and Bruce Jack fit that criteria. Once we put our foot on that ground, the next bit and this is a hard bit for us is about growing it. The challenge that we get given by the company is we've, we've got in there and now we have to grow that. And that comes through a combination of both exploration and the application of our unique mining capability. And I'll touch on that in a second. We've fortunately to save both at Red Cross and Bruce Jack, we are in the growth phase and we're starting to deliver. And the examples of us continued to look for growth opportunities and our sort of more traditional search basis is they have our own story that's been unfolding over the last couple of years. And then the third thing we do is we've got the Taiwan assets that we've got now. But the break for the exploration group is we've got to keep looking for the next ones and we take a somewhat different approach. It's all through partnerships. We don't go out and generate our own ground. We know where we want to be, but we think the best way to do that is through partners.

So we hunt for the best partners with the best ground, and then it's a collaboration between the two companies to get to where we need to get to. So this story about Tier one assets is really Newcrest. It's why we were well, how we've grown since 1991. And it's the way that we continue to grow. We've been very successful in transforming, forming projects into long term mines.
A few examples. So a couple of examples here is obviously Telfer, which has actually been around for I think we're getting closer over 40 years, getting close to 50 years. Cadia, which started off as an exploration play back in the early nineties. Been mining since about 97 and got a very long future. They've got Indonesia on their costs and then we've got our two new districts Red Chris and Bruce, check where we believe we'll do the same journey.

How we do that transformation is through exploration and generally it's the exploration group going out and that those discoveries have come deeper. So if you look at what we do, it's pretty simple get on the ground and then start changing the search base. Through that, Newcrest has had to develop its mining capability, its underground mining capability and in particular our bulk underground mining capability.

So we've done that and we now reap rewards from that. You can see that from Cadia that then in turns becoming becomes a great advantage for the exploration group because we can look deeper. And when you look at the industry right now as we start looking deeper, we think we're pretty well positioned. So if we jump into our new districts and just talk about what we're doing in there, both Bruce, Jack and Red Crystal located an area that's referred to as the Golden Triangle in northern British Columbia in Canada.
Now, the reason why it's called the Golden Triangle, it is one of the premier gold endowed provinces in the world with over 270 million ounces of gold. What Newcrest is really excited by, and I should say that we're excited by, is that we've captured the highest grade porphyry copper system in the district, Red Criss, and we've also been successful in identifying grabbing the highest grade every thermal at Bruce.
Jack, we should point out that Newcrest now is the biggest miner in the in this region and we're also the biggest explorer. We'll spend about $70 million us in this area over the next 12 months. And so this question sometimes get asked by lawyers in our company, one of the events for big work, for a big company to get money to play with.
But you get lots of lawyers, actually lots of questions. And when we say things, you've always got to justify why. So when they have say, well, can you say that Bruce checks a high grade deposit? We show them they slides. This is the characteristic of Bruce Jack. It contains extremely high grade, high grade gold. And it's very common to see grades greater than a thousand grams.
And that's what drives the mine. And what you see, it is a in unique in many ways that the gold is actually very fine and forms in bands and veins. So it's not your classic coarse nugget deposit, it is what you see here. And these are some of the samples that two samples from underground and then one from drill core in the top of the diagram.
But for gold bugs, it's a great place to visit. I've got to say the slides look good at this scale as well. So first check, it's it's in the Golden Triangle, but it's interesting where it is. It's surrounded by a bunch of poor forest, which Newcrest doesn't own their own by third parties. There's about six of them. And when you get up, it's interesting.
When you get up in a helicopter and fly over this, you've got these big portraits, you've got the thermal districts in the middle of it, and there's easily over 100 million ounces. So it is a it is a really fantastic place for exploration just because the metal pedigree, the main characteristics of Bruce Jack, when the snow's off the area, which is only like for two or three months of the year, you see a band of alteration, which is about 500 meters to a kilometer wide, that runs north, south from Golden Marmot in the top of the slide, which is a new discovery to bridge zone in the south.
Our operation is centered on Valley of the Kings, which is producing just over a well greater than the 300,000 ounces a year. An interesting thing about Valley of the Kings, it's only a recent discovery. It was only made in 2010. And what that means is a lot of the exploration or a lot of the work since 2010 has all been about Valley of the Kings, and it's really only the last 12 to 18 months that Bruce Jacques exploration team and now Newcrest is starting to look outside of that area.
We have a very aggressive exploration program in place. We're going to drill over 200,000 meters this year. And on this slide here up and here is the long section through the area. So here's Valley the Kings. What's shown in red is the resource. All the drilling and all those dots of gold. And what we've been able to do in the last 12 months is we've found this north block and now we're finding the 1080.
And we've been releasing, you know, some of those results there. And you can see some of the really high grade on that slide. Our drill rigs are continuing right now to define those zones, mineralization to demonstrate the continuity and the footprint of the mineralization, because the Valley Kings, which is basically open all directions. The other thing to note about this slide is once you head out of this area, very little drilling, even though the alteration corridor, as you saw on that last slide or as you can see in here, continues in that area.
We've also got a surface program in place and it's it's very interesting for Australians getting used to snow. We only can explore for 2 to 3 months, but right now we've got four drill rigs on on the deck. And what happened was Bruce Jacques about 12 months ago undertook a major surface targeting exercise, including machine learning. And one of the key targets that came out of this was Golden Marmot, which was the least explored at that point of time.
They went in there last year and they drilled a bunch of holes and that was successful in identifying a new zone or new area that contains Valley of the Kings Star mineralization. And we're seeing the same style of high grade veins. And you can see the gold veins in there. And again, we're seeing these really high grades of over a thousand grams.

So as I said, right now we've got our drill rigs in there. And the aim is to demonstrate the continuity of this area and also the footprint of the mineralization, because the mineralization is still open. So this really shows at Bruce Jack, we've hit the ground, we've take the first box and that's required it. Now we're into the next phase and it's all about the growth.
If we jump over to Red Cross. Red Cross is a joint venture with Imperial and Newcrest. Now, as I said before, the reason that Newcrest Mining this, one of the reasons was its high grade nature and that's one of the things that we look for in poor Friz. We don't want the common garden variety, poor freeze, we want things that have got grade because that's where the money generator in these systems are and that is a big feature of red.
Chris It's rich in both gold and copper and actually contains very high grade gold. In places you can see values up to 18 grams. That's highly unusual for porphyry systems. We do not see that at Cadia. We do get higher grade, but not at that level. So again, it's showing this part of the world is very different and the reasons that Newcrest went into this is a pretty simple one.
There's Imperial had identified a underground deposit at each zone and Newcrest wanted to get exposure to that so that we could apply our bulk mining capability. And then we saw the growth potential. We released our PFC last year and what it did show is that that Bruce, Jack, so Red Chris has the potential to be a long term two tier one underground operation by leveraging off our experiences and histories of block caving in Australia.
The other thing that we went in for is growth as we said, and until Newcrest went in, the Porphyry system stopped actually there on that line the feeling was that this we knew the previous companies imperial, they knew that this fault played some sort of role, that there was some has either terminated the mineralization or offset the mineralization and they drilled a couple of holes out here and not much success.
We then started systematically stepping out and one of the first holes that we drilled, we got 76 meters about one and a half grams gold and one and a half per cent copper, which is good for porphyry. Since then we've been successful in identifying a corridor now for about 800 meters long, so we've actually significantly increased the extent of the corridor and then we've identified higher grade in here at East Ridge and we were able to define an exploration target which we released in our quarterly, which was out two weeks ago.
And if you're interested, our quarterly is also at our booth where we're happy to talk about it. And what we're doing right now is carrying out more drilling to advance the exploration target. And we've got, I think, seven drill rigs. And the other thing we should notice is that Newcrest has actually started a decline and we're already drilling from underground.

So that's one of the things our company does is we're pretty agile and when we say something, we move pretty quick. So Red Cross is a really good example of where Newcrest can come in and add value throughout both our exploration DNA and our mining DNA and and transform a district potentially into a district t one district. This is just a slide through it for the geologists.
The the mineralization is hosted with Palfrey's belt of poor. Here the high grade is with these little there's about five phases of poor freeze. The high grade is located around these smaller earlier phases poor freeze. And they they're not very big. They're probably only 50 by 50 or maybe a little bit bigger, a couple of hundred meters high.
But they contain phenomenal growth. It's a very concentrated metal. The interesting thing from exploration point of view, drill up here, you don't see them. So our attack here is if we see poor freeze, we drill deeper. And and the advantage is we know if we can if we do find it, we can mount. Now, jumping back to our traditional search basis.

And this is in this part of the world. This is a Patterson and one of the stories that's been unfolding for us in Greenland over the last couple of years has been they have run they have run joint venture, Newcrest joint venture in there in 2009. Team with great winds and we've what we've done is leverage off the great work that Colin Baxter did at Great Land.
You know we can can never give them enough, you know, a wall up thanks for what they did because they went in there and for a junior drilled some really deep holes, hit some significant mineralization. And from that Newcrest has been able to go in. And what we would say is the two companies in the exploration space have worked very close and we've significantly advanced this project in a very small period of time.

We've drilled, I think just over 250,000 meters. And as we talk right now, we've still got six drill rigs churning away up at Chevron. And it's located 45 kilometers east of Telfer, under about 400 meters of cover, centered on a bullseye geophysical anomaly. And if you were to strip the cover off, what you would see is this ovoid shape of alteration.
The line here in blue, it's about 600 by 600, and we've taken it down to at least a thousand meters below the unconformity. So roughly 1500 meters from surface, that alteration centered around a bunch of north west training structures, some north south structures and a whole bunch of die right sills and dikes. And what the mineralization is associated or formed within these very focused breccia pipes that just ripped through this system. And what's happened is they those breccia pipes have coalesced to form the major zone of mineralization, which we call sorry we referred to as the south east cresent zone, which is in this area through here. Now, that, as the name suggests, is a crescent. If you were to, you know, stretch it out, it's about 600 meters long in the upper parts, about 30 meters wide.

But as you get deeper, it starts tapering the the greatest. And we're talking about high grade here. It start tapering. The grade is still there and still open. And we're down at about 1000 over 1000 meters. It's still there and we still drilling underneath it. You can see some of the better results at depth. The interesting thing over the last six months is the the Eastern Breccia.
This is a it appears to be a discrete zone of mineralization that sits outboard of the south east present zone. We first drilled it in 2020 and hole 84 hit about 300 meters at two grams. If you were to look at this core, you'd struggle to understand why it's carrying that grade very different to what we saw at present.
But infill drilling is now starting to see the higher grade like we see at Crescent. And we're seeing some of the, you know, the 62 meters at five grams and point 3% copper. The drilling, as I said, our drilling right now is focused on top of that Eastern Breccia only if you were to drill above it, you can't see it, so you only see it at around about 800 meters below that unconformity it's a very confined breccia pipe, but what it does raise is the potential that we believe there's more of these floating around.
However, on and that's one of the things that we've also got in place now is that we're chasing both South East Crescent and Eastern Breccia. But the question is, where's the rest of these other little breccia pipes? So we're in the in the process now of moving our drill rigs into this area. In addition to that, Hebron has got a unique exploration model or target, very different to Telfer.

And one thing that John Heron Ski always been an area about. So resetting your exploration maturity clock by applying either new technologies or new models. So applying the have run model is actually opening up the Paterson again. And it's something we're applying on the interior ground and the Great Land Joint Ventures as well as our own 100% ground.
So we're actually going back into our Telfer ground and re looking at that right now.

So that's our story and now in our existing provinces. But I said before the search continues, we always are out there looking for the new ones. We take a very focused approach to our exploration when not everywhere. We only go to obviously gold rich belt.
So that's that's a given. But we only really go where we can leverage off our capability and we bring something to the table. What we would say in this space is over the last 12 to 18 months, COVID did hit our greenfields exploration pretty heavily. We stopped exploring in South America. We put a halt on it and in the US because what we in those areas were very strongly connected to the local communities and there was a whole issue about the impact of COVID of us bringing COVID into the community, and that was a big risk for us.
And so as a result, we slowed down our exploration. So we were comfortable that we had enough controls to protect both our own people and the communities which we work in. And we must say that that's gone very, very well. And so we're back up and running. We now are in the process of refurbishing or replenishing our portfolio, turning ground over and hunting for new opportunities.
As I said before, we take a partnership approach to it. So we use this part of the talk to advertise that Newcrest is out there looking for projects. We would like more in Australia. We're, you know, presently heavily focused on the Paterson, but we'd like to get more. So one of the reasons we do come to diggers is that we've got a large presence here in the boots.
So if you do have a project that you're looking for a home, please reach out to us because we've been flying around, so we'll finish on. Well, what does Newcrest bring to the table? Well, we first of all think that we we work very well in partnerships and we've demonstrated that we believe that that exploration is a team sport.

It's not an individual sport. No one group or one person holds all the ideas. So we take a very collaborative approach. Our partners get exposure to our expression, DNA, which is 40 over 40 years of exploration knowledge. We also get the advantage of getting, to use our innovative expression technology, which we are heavily invested in. And also our search base is somewhat different to the rest.
One of the great things is we take a very flexible approach to deals from option level deals all the way, as you've seen through the mergers and acquisitions. And one of the things that we do get a lot of feedback from our peers and the other groups we deal with. For a company like Newcrest, we're pretty agile, so we can move pretty quick, sign a deal and get on the ground and pretty quick.
And I think Great Land and the Newcrest Partnership, it have run as a really good example of two. Our two companies have moved pretty quick to get that along. So look, that's all I've got today. I think it's good to give an update the way Newcrest is. It's good to go back to 2017 and see where we are and I think it's been a phenomenal ride by the company and it's been great to be part of it.
But I think over the next few years we're going to even get better and deliver more growth. So thank you very much.

00:22:48:14 - 00:23:17:11
Speaker 1
Thank you very much, Fraser. We have time for one question. If there is one from the audience. Excellent. Looks like another might be blown away. This one over here on the right hand side, he spotted today.

00:23:17:11 - 00:23:20:23
Speaker 3
Andrew McKinnon from Melbourne. Good to Be back.
Just one question. I see you still in New Guinea. Has the political situation speech in the Highland Room wealthy in there? You're still interested in New Guinea?

00:23:32:26 - 00:23:51:08
Speaker 2
Yeah, I wish to. Well, we've still got obviously we've got our only gold mine, which is one of our bigger operations and that operates quite successfully in Guinea. And we've still got our presence. So as you point out, it wasafi go to where we're working with our partners in the government to get that into our studies and production profile. So we're still quite comfortable, acti

[Sureasblazes]

Thanks Liam, seems very restrained from Newcrest. (Taiwan threw me until I realised it was Tier 1).
I’m looking forward to Shaun’s presentation and hope (believe) he is ready for any tricks NC may be thinking of playing. So far he has proved a knack for covering all bases.

[CanisLycaon]

Yes, definitely some 'manipulated' downplay, IMHO! Especially after last year's presentation.

Clearly Fraser remains confident, even increasingly so, that there are more Havieron's floating around Havieron!

[DipSard]

Having had a quick read it seems like this year Fraser wanted to focus on their strategical directive for growth in the america's and also talk about the new acquisition.
There was some complementary mention of Callum and GGP but yep the Havieron mentions will seem muted to us but just think it wasn't a major focus of his presentation unlike last year, they still knew last August they probably planned to call the option exercise I imagine.
They aren't going to mention our MRE as we used different zonations and different methodology for a start so not like for like but obviously they don't want to have a junior on any joint venture creating their own MRE's become the norm. Worth remembering that they always use conservative approaches and metrics with all of their own estimates and studies and reporting as a corporation.
Need to see how they proceed with the 5 percent as if it was our valuation that 'won' then they need to perform additional DD I presume to justify ROI as higher than their submission and we have the MRE due with FY results too.
I do think their best opportunity for an offer for Havieron really now is with DFS in hand to justify ROI but they need to move quickly as once Shaun concludes funding for our share of development costs, will make it harder for them as shareholders will know we have everything in place for production, interesting times for sure

[CanisLycaon]

It'll be fascinating to hear what Shaun Day has to say tomorrow!

[LoggyLogbot]

Maybe Sandeep has told everyone "whatever you do please don't mention Havieron" - thus Hebron / Chevron and all the other variants

[poniexpress]

My perception from reading the rough transcript is that being initially complimentary to Callum Baxter and others it starts with what may be considered by some to be slightly down playing the progress of Havieron followed by slightly past tense vocabulary when mentioning the future- Particularly "A wallup Thanks for what they did etc which enabled Newcrest to go in". later references refer to new names for parts of Havieron which can be considered strange. Like Newcrest were expecting to own Havieron and this would be their stamp of the future Havieron.
These slight nuances may be explained by the presenter having some knowledge already of a possible buy out offer to GGP for Havieron in the near term and not as Newcrest playing "down" to get what they want as some may think.
This possibility is further backed up later when saying about seeking partners for several areas including new areas with kind words re GGP and their 100% owned prospects (including Ernest Giles implied) having got past the Covid delays which delayed Newcrests exploration.
If an offer were to come from Newcrest they must know it would have to a good offer to retain the respect of GGP and the wider Australian market players to their future Australian joint venture dreams.
Also, possibly controversially. do not rule out an exploration merger offer with GGP as well such as GGPCREST in tandem with a Havieron takeover.
The relationship between the two (Newcrest and Greatland) will not be put at risk which is why Shaun is so positive about relations.
Interesting times and food for thought.
There appears to be scope for so much more.

[DipSard]

Notes from NCM Presentation at Diggers and Dealers - 01 Aug 2022
https://www.ggpchat.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=429

[poniexpress]

Another take on it by the excellent Dipsard. Review time?

[Mremc2]

Oh oh - warning bell sounded at 10:40 minutes in.

"So applying the Havieron model is actually opening up the Paterson again. And it's something we're applying on the interior ground and the Greatland Joint Ventures as well as our own 100% ground. So we're actually going back into our Telfer ground and are looking at that right now."

Looking at that right now and if they find something on Telfer ground are they going to slow down at Havieron and our other JVs? That would certainly impact on GGP.

[Costa]

I don't particularly see it that way because its one thing looking at that ground, then drilling that ground, proving it, then seeking to finance and mine what they may find subject to economies of scale. All of that will take time. Time Telfer does not necessarily have in abundance. Not saying they won't mind you.

Also, do we know what is in the fine print of the JV.

[DipSard]

Oh oh - warning bell sounded at 10:40 minutes in.

"So applying the Havieron model is actually opening up the Paterson again. And it's something we're applying on the interior ground and the Greatland Joint Ventures as well as our own 100% ground. So we're actually going back into our Telfer ground and are looking at that right now."

Looking at that right now and if they find something on Telfer ground are they going to slow down at Havieron and our other JVs? That would certainly impact on GGP.

It made sense to me mate, as new tech and a better understanding of a gold province comes to the fore you then go and reevaluate all of your tenements in that region to see if you can unlock more value, just common sense and not a veiled threat to GGP or Antipa or any of their other partners - not when they spend considerable time promoting their partnership qualities in the entirety of the presentation - take a good read through the notes/transcript perhaps, he is talking not just about Telfer but Havieron and the Juri JV's and others such as Antipa.

And IF they do find another area of mineralisation in Telfer, that added to the dribs and drabs coming from there currently and our own 3 mtpa from the Starter Mine within 18 months are hardly likely to stretch the Telfer mill to it's limits and Havieron will take a few years to ramp up with bulk mining. They are bound to be looking for more ore to put through the mill either from new or existing sources and rightly so.

I've created excerpts of the notes with more relevant sections to us and overall it actually reads very well and they constantly promote and ask for new partners and compliment our relationship, I think both Shaun and NCM team are working to put a more positive spin on the JV out there now that the price determination is completed.

Notes from NCM Presentation at Diggers and Dealers including excerpts of the GGP related sections:
https://www.ggpchat.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=429

[zoros]

NCM can't afford to slow down. Having spent in excess of $300m to date and telfer extended for only a short while, the race is on. And it is a race - NCM know there's gold there, they know its the best find in W Aussie for decades and they know that the cost for winding Telfer in manpower and cost is prohibitive.
They are diluting results (since 15th Dec 2021) and preparing the way for a 100% bid on Hav.
Remember - there are those of us who are steeped in GGP and we know exactly what SB knows. He, however is dumbing the whole thing down for his shareholders because when the time comes to make a bid, he wants to impress upon them that his offer is low for a reason (2.9Moz and counting), so something around 25p plus a 40% premium is a fair price.
But behind the scenes, he's doing us over - big time......................................or so he thinks.
SB, welcome to your equal: SB.
Z

[Mremc2]

I suppose he was animated on the subject from a geologist point of view!

Sometime I wish I was not 'all in' so that I could find distractions elsewhere ha ha!

[zoros]

"SB, welcome to your equal: SD"

Apols
Z