GGPChat

Notes from Callum Baxter Interview with Coffee with Samso - 02 July 2022

Interview: https://youtu.be/QyuCoTk0Yiw

Quick edit of very messy YouTube Transcript export, removed small sections here and there

*Welcome to the coffee store where we're having our discovery expiration series, this is our second episode and it's taken me a while to get this man on camera Callum Baxter who was a founding member of GGP, the story today is all about the discover Havieron (Hav). Maybe you can start by introducing yourself and let us know who you are how you and drive the story?
- Thanks Noel yeah it has been a while and but it's good to be here and to be able to have a chat now, my background is an early stage exploration geologist, I started working in the industry in the early 90s and I completed my undergrad at Curtin and then completed masters in all deposit geology here at UWA
- In the early 2000s, early parts of my career I was involved mainly in gold exploration in remote parts of western Australia and I was fortunate enough to be part of the discovery crew for the Nimri Jundee deposits up north of Wiluna so that was quite an exciting time in the early mid 90s and then I moved into more global exploration in places such as Africa and Asia looking for nickel deposits and other types of gold deposits
- And then in the mid 2000s myself and another geologist by the name of Paul Askins who was the exploration manager of Shell Billiton’s previously
- We decided to take a company to London and list it on AIM of the London stock exchange and that was really the start of GGP then back in 2006 with that initial IPO on AIM so very much again early exploration focused company but looking for large opportunities in under-explored areas and we weren't afraid to go undercover so that that was in the mid 2000s when undercover was probably not the flavour of the month
- But we developed a series of exploration tools and strategies to try and push undercover in different parts of the world mainly focusing on Australia because the political risk is relatively low in Australia and there's some fantastic opportunities here in Australia for undercover exploration

*In terms of what you're talking about undercover I mean that's very early time to even thinking of undercover I mean if I go back to my memory, money wasn't that easy to come about and undercover drilling was obviously expensive so when you listed this company when you talk undercover were you already thinking you know 400 meters or were you thinking smaller numbers, or was that the big picture that you're saying that the big elephant is that kind of scale?
- Well it's easy to convince yourself that undercover is worthwhile pursuing and whether it's 100 meters or 400 it all depends on the size of the prize really so you look at the mineral endowment of Australia and it is fantastic and of course all the good deposits that poked out of the ground have been found so there's still a lot of monsters lurking undercover out there and so we probably weren't targeting 400 meters depth at that stage in the in the mid 2000s
- Sort of moving into 2010, we pushed into the eastern parts of the Uganda craton in western Australia where we recognized that there was a buried greenstone belt we could see it on aero magnetics but we weren't quite sure how deep the cover was but some of the early drilling that we did out there proved that it was greenstone and also the cover sequence was anywhere between 180 and 350 meters deep and that project we called Ernest Giles which is still in the GGP portfolio today and we've had a lot of success there defining a large mineral system which has gold and also nickel potential
- The drilling to date has been very broad spaced we started with 800 by 800 meter vertical RC holes, 800 by 800 that's the XY pattern on the surface and then closed that down to 400 by 400 so we're really moving into areas that are completely greenfield and then utilizing the current drilling technology to tap sort of very large mineral systems
- From about 2010 we're active on the ground on that project and so it's still a very attractive opportunity out there because you know there are very few places in the world which with such low political risk we can have a commanding position of a whole greenstone belt that hasn't had mineral exploration carried out in a major way, so those kind of opportunities were always very attractive to us

* Because for those that are not sort of in our space 800 meters is a long way a long way right - It's like you can't see each other to some degree and so when you say you, you're drilling those holes obviously there must be a geophysical target because I can't think of anything else you would chase out there other than a geophysical target right?
- yeah well the original opportunity was identified through geophysical data sets for sure, so that was primarily airborne magnetics and also very helpful is ground gravity
- can get some fantastic data sets using ground gravity equipment these days and also using some sort of a bit left of centre geochemical techniques such as mobile metal ions, it's a bit of a blunt tool but it still sort of gives you an indication of whether you're in the ballpark or not and when you combine say that in a basic sense the three data sets such as aeromagnetic gravity and the mobile metal ions you can start to develop targets
- which is then when we deploy the 800 by 800 meter drill spacing to give us a flavour of how deep is the cover, how easy or difficult is it to drill through the cover sequence to get to the basement rocks, what are the basement rocks, what is the alteration sequence in the basement rocks and is it telling us that we're in the right ballpark and we managed to tick all those boxes with Ernst Giles

* Sorry to interrupt but mental capacity at that time to go after this must be that we are chasing a big elephant right; would that be correct?
- yeah that sort of always goes with the with the GGP story is that we are chasing elephants here and no we're not looking for 50-100 000 ounces, we're looking for big systems that are plus five plus ten million ounces of course you need a system of that scale to justify dealing with the cover sequence and we're always looking for big targets so you should get an indication if you are drilling on 800 by 800 meter centres that you are nearby or on top of one of these systems

* Because you're expecting the smoke to be large, wider and to that scale right I assume that's the thinking is that if you can't sniff these things with that kind of spacing then you are really only chasing something small?- that's right, yeah and there are there are some very good small deposits which are suitable for certain types of companies but we were always really focused on big scale stuff that would really be a company maker, of course the risk it's slightly more difficult sort of terrain to engage and uh quite often the understanding of what we were trying to do wasn't there, but still we did have people that understood the story and wanted to come on the journey with us through investing in the company or in the SIM IPO so it did have its challenges and because quite often we're moving into quite remote locations but that's good in a sense as well in that you're not really dealing with legacy matters in terrain that's been crawled over quite a lot and you don't have certain things trying to influence your thinking and where you should be drilling holes or what exploration techniques you should be using because we're really pushing the envelope all the time moving into a new headspace and you know new terrains chasing big deposits

* Because, obviously the price I mean if you look at - what is at Havieron now, I just took this off the latest presentation - it's 2.9 million ounce at 3.7 gold equivalent which is you know at - only probably a big company like Newcrest who has Telfer could handle that, so it was the discovery and as well as the opportunity of someone so close to that can take it on right, to facilitate the exit for you guys between listing 2010 and discovery in 2017?
- yeah we listed in 2006, so in our first involvement at Havieron was in 2016, there was 10 years there yeah where we were working on other projects such as Ernest Giles

* So how what were the challenges like, because for those guys who think and a lot of investors out there think everything is an overnight success, that's a long journey before you even tasted success, how was that challenge for you guys you know because you're out there marketing the company?
- I think people were really backing the people and they're a lot of the investors or all the investors realize that this is a high risk endeavour as all early-stage mineral exploration is but they realized that we were chasing big prizes and they were happy to take the near-misses along the way until we came across Hav and turn it into something much bigger than what it was at the time

* I mean that's what I tried to tell in, sort of share that thought is that it is a long long journey, it is a high risk game and it's about backing the right management and picking the right management hence backing them and letting them do their job in that sense right and if I don't know whether you can agree or disagree that most of the successes that we hear out there has been that kind of formula is that picking the right management letting the management do the job and then the rewards come later right, whether it's six years or 12 years or three years or one year, it's just letting that , so that as I was trying to figure it out you know that that's a long time between dreams and there must be times where you guys sit there and thought hey you know I don't know if this is going to happen or not you know?
- yeah quite often you do reflect and think gee really I’m quite privileged that my time hasn't run out yet and people are still willing to provide support to let us chase these big deposits and we were vindicated in 2018 with our series of first drill holes at Hav which was quite an achievement at the time

* So now let's get to the discovery you've gone there you've got this geophysical target and you're saying let's go and drill can you share with us that thinking then because you haven't drilled those two holes, the series of holes you've got this target and do you at that point in time, are you going back to the guys, hey you know, I got this really good idea, how was that experience?
- yeah well let's take a little bit of a step back in that as you said you know there were some years of no major discoveries and we were always looking for new opportunities and in 2016 we were shown this geophysical target in the Paterson region in northern western Australia about 50 kilometres east of Telfer and it was held by a private company based out of Melbourne and they'd had it for a number of years and really couldn't generate any traction with it and so when I looked at it I thought really this if, we did some initial modelling which was slightly out of the box on the data sets that were available and I realized that there was some potential for some significant scale here and I went to the management and some of the shareholders and I said there's this opportunity here, it's in quite a remote location but it's not far from a very large deposit Telfer which has been in operation for many years
- the infrastructure is pretty poor in the general area apart from Telfer itself it's a long way from a regional centre, 500 kilometres from Port Hedland but if or and there is a fair amount of cover we're looking at a roughly 400 meters of cover, but if there is something here it could be something quite substantial
- so we all decided that it was worth the risk again it was a high risk opportunity but having worked undercover at places such as Ernest Giles we developed an undercover skill set in terms of how to how to tweak our geophysics how to tweak our geochemistry
- we knew who had the right kind of drill equipment in the industry in western Australia because that's obviously a very important part of the whole process is that if you can't successfully drill the holes then you you're really using a lot of money to achieve nothing so you want to make sure those drill holes are going to get to target and do it as efficiently as possible
- so we felt confident that we had all the components in place that we could effectively test this target relatively efficiently, spent a lot of time modelling the geophysics, roughly nine months backwards and forwards different iterations and that enabled me to sight the initial drill holes well enough
- also I was fortunate enough to be able to visit the Telfer operation and stay on site for a couple of days and look at the core library where there'd been two holes that had previously been drilled by Newcrest into HAV geophysical target in the early 90s and there was more than 100 metres of mineralization in the first hole so it really clued us up to how we can use our geophysics to accurately target the best, as best we could mineralization and sort of tell the potential of it with our first drill holes
- and so it was a bit difficult to communicate our strategy to the market because the market really wants to know what kind of deposit are you targeting and intrusion related gold systems at that time weren't well known in the market you know the average retail investor really understood west Australian gold fields quite well, those kind of deposits, but intrusion-related gold systems they're not porphyry’s and potentially they're not quite a skarn type deposit so we really invoked an IOCG model but really just to talk to the market in that the market understood IOCG deposits as being rather large of scale, had potential for multiple commodities such as gold and copper for example and some of our modelling did lean on the IOCG processing techniques somewhat and it was just a convenient box to put our exploration target in at the time and we realized that Telfer itself isn’t an IOCG it's an intrusion-related gold system it's
- so anyway we developed four drill holes and we spoke to a number of drill companies in western Australia and we realized that there was a couple that had the had the experience and the equipment to do it and we were fortunate enough to get the support of DDH1 out of western Australia to help us drill our first holes at the property and we intersected over 100 metres of mineralization in the first drill hole which was quite an achievement

* I think 103 meters at 3.5 grams ton and 0.93% copper, yeah so I mean that was the first hole that went in and you got that, was that sort of like - is the precision there or was that luck, an element of luck or what I mean to get that on your first hole on a geophysical image or geophysical target I should say it's not like pinpoint surgery?
- right well if you look at the….. there's been a recent resource and reserve update from GGP and if you look at the scale of the system and the volume you could say it was relatively easy to hit once you were down there through the cover sequence, it's a large beast and yeah the drill holes were difficult, it was difficult to miss it really okay I know that that… it's probably not quite right in that description because we did manage to intersect one of the highest grade parts of the deposit that's been found to date which is still rather large in itself but we were fortunate that our geophysics had honed in on the higher grade or one of the higher grade portions of the ore body which we're pulling outstanding grades with drill hole intercepts equivalent to a thousand gram metres roughly

*When you say, can you say that the core, the higher grade system gave a unique signature that you guys were able to harness or pick or define?
- it’s easy to talk about in hindsight because but when you're looking at it without drilling a hole, it was it was good that we were able… we actually modelled it very well and the thought process that we put into it was exactly what it was when we drilled it and so we were very fortunate that that the way we were thinking was what it actually was in the ground with the magnetic signature and the gravity signature and the mobile metal iron geochemistry at surface
- as I mentioned before it's a it's a bit of a blunt tool but still gives you a flavour of what's happening even through 400 meters of cover and we were definitely getting all the primary elements such as gold and copper coming through in the mobile metal ions and also with the density contrasts in the deposit because of the distribution of the breccia and the and the massive sulphides
- we could see that in the gravity and we could also see the distribution of the magnetic portions of the ore body as well in the magnetics and our modelling was beautiful, I haven't seen anyone do a better job to date, I’m sure there has been but it’s maybe not in the public domain but exactly we're pretty proud of what we achieved

* So you would say that's a type of deposit that fitted your modelling perfectly?
- well I shouldn't say perfectly but it fitted it very well

* I mean when we're talking in expiration you hit it as well as you guys have yeah and when you felt it's almost perfect right because we know how hard it is to do ity eah and that that's a good topic because obviously geophysics they played a big role with uh the MMI that you talk about, do you think that the development of the technology at that time had been the key because maybe the technology 10 years ago I’m just postulating here would not have given you that definition and how does that if that was the case and how would it be at 2022? Do you think the definition has gone another level, what's your thoughts on that?
- yeah certainly the techniques we were using have been around for many years but a lot of the equipment these days is a lot more sensitive and can be Muchmore easily deployed in the field and certainly when Newcrest were doing their exploration out there in the 80s and the early 90s they Newcrest were the first ones to recognize the airborne magnetic anomaly and drilled the first hole into Hav and their first drill hole was solely based on aero magnetics and their modelling was very good you know, they got over 100 meters of mineralization in their first hole and of course back in 1991 it was actually quite difficult to drill a 500 meter deep core hole in an exploration sense in a very remote location, so they did a very good job and achieved quite a lot at the time but fast forward as you said to 2016 or 2018 when we were out there we had the benefit of much better gravity data
- Newcrest had collected a gravity dataset, ground gravity dataset in 1991 but of course the height control is very important to gravity data and the height control back in the 90s was quite blunt and today we have the benefit of much better spatial accuracy with the gravity data sets so that enabled us to better refine the gravity data set which we did
- we recollected the gravity before we drilled a hole and also techniques such as MMI you know they weren't around back in the 90s and or it was MMI actually was around in the 90s but it wasn't very popular so yeah we did have the benefit of sort of 20 years of more advanced technology and also we had a generation of geophysical modelling as well
- geophysical modelling is quite an iterative process where modelling will happen and a result will be found and holes will be drilled and then okay we didn't hit it why didn't we hit it we think this is why or we've got it this is why we got it so then that gets fed back into the modelling process over 20 years and so the modelling becomes much more precise and the output is much more understandable even for just geologists such as myself
- i don't have any formal studies in in geophysics but having us used it for over 25 years and being involved in the process I understand the process and how to apply it to exploration it's really quite important it's quite powerful tool which a lot of companies don't engage with
- I know from my experience in gold exploration in the 90s geophysics apart from aero magnetics wasn't used very much but now I think it's pretty much a routine tool to be part of the exploration toolkit

* Yeah no I mean we see it a lot and I think and I try to get the guys I speak to explain it because there's just so many different ways of doing it why they're doing it and the understanding not to say even for the retail investors out there or the guys anyone who's listening it's more complicated than it is because as you said you know most people have brushed by the thought is the modelling part is another skillset the actual collecting is a skill set and the technology is what it is, so I’ve had discussion with people where they, you know the technology part has gone so much higher than even at 2016 to now we're it'd be interesting to see whether using the technology today the equipment and the definition that what you would have seen would have altered the modelling that you would have thought it's just one of those things right as we progress
- Yeah there's still geophysical data sets being collected over Hav, to look at the the bigger scale picture you know looking at crustal scale features to guide exploration in a broader sense in the region so it's still very powerful tool being deployed today even after the deposits have been found
- there's obviously there’s potentially others out there that are still to be found in the region

* In 2010 when I listed my company I i was obviously scouring looking for projects I did come across a guy who had a project in the Paterson, and I had similar thinking that you know go where others have not been or don't go but here's one comment to me says oh no it's really remote because you know forward driving on the top end of difficulty so it's really remote and you're raising two and a half that time three million you still think hmm yeah maybe this is not the game you know, let's go find something else because but looking back you know I mean that is what it is right you got to be committed and you got to have a vision of what you are chasing and I think these kind of stuff, I mean as you say right the deep stuff the big elephants are still sitting there and I I’m probably you I don't agree or not but I reckon there's still lots of elephants who are sitting in the ground that you know even and if we even go into the well-known areas like the gold fields all the easy stuff is found and there's still easy stuff being found but the deep stuff the big elephants are still there, that's my feeling even in the in the gold fields
- oh definitely yeah the mineral endowment in the gold fields for example is enormous and there's a lot of it undercover, Ernest Giles is a classic example of that one of the GGP projects where it's undercover has had relatively little exploration and it it has all the alteration systems and the right rocks and gold's been intersected in the RC holes, it's just a matter of now really getting an all-grade intercept of tenor enough to support uh mining of a deposit under 200 metres of cover

* I mean I obviously talked to a lot of guys in the industry and I even I’m feeling the appreciation of the potential that's out there, it's all about how much money you got in your wallet to chase it but the potential is huge like Galileo found a new Palladium province in Norseman, yeah every man has dog been through Norseman right but they've still found something yep and then if you look at some of the Gopala, it's again a bit like the Paterson where not a lot of people have been still a major deposit been found I mean I’m involved in an IPO now that projects there but you sort of look at it because geez the prospectivity is huge yeah you know it's not trampled on a bit like the gold fields but uh yeah and people have been there you could brush it off so there's nothing there but you know it's there it's you've just got to go looking for it I guess
- yeah that's right and have the right mindset and the support as well and also deploying the right exploration tools for the job to get the right targets to drill

* So what's you know Callum Baxter doing now like post this great success you know, what's on the agenda apart from hanging out
- yeah I’m spending time with friends and family and of course I live on the south coast of west Australia been there for more than 12 years now so just taking some down time after working pretty hard particularly the last few years since 2018 the first drill holes at Hav
- it was a very busy period so again yeah just re-engaging with friends and family and haven't really pursued any new opportunities as yet but I’m sure that'll come in and also with the Covid travel restrictions and working out of the UK for many years I’ve only just been able to return to the UK and had a visit earlier this month and caught up with some of the colleagues that I’ve worked with for over 15 years out of London, that was very good it's good to see all they're all very enthusiastic and enjoying continuing their exploration activities

* any sparks happening, anyone pulling you back into the into the system
- not as yet no, no I’m still pretty much at arm's length still enjoying catching up with friends and family but I’m sure inevitably it'll come that I’ll be pulled back in

* So what's you know now that you look you're sitting back watching from afar what's your thoughts on what's happening because we as geologists as we just found out we actually worked in the same place back in 1992-93 , what's your thoughts now because my I’ve been giving the narrative that this has been two years of what we in our industry has never seen the amount of money the continuation of interest we’ve had to pull back over time corrections that happen but I’m still saying that the this resource boom or positivity has longer legs, what's your thoughts I mean you've been in the street as long as I have so what's your thoughts?
- I agree with you, the commodity prices have been remarkably resilient in the past six months or so with the general slowdown in the global markets the commodity prices have remained high and I still think the industry is very buoyant
- it's received a lot of support, there's still a lot of exploration happening, the producers are receiving a good price for their product and the industry's really robust so I’m quite pleased of where the industry is in you know in terms of the market and global economic forces at the moment
- I think there's some, a lot of share prices have retreated a little bit I think that’s because some money's been taken off the table in the market globally so it's a good value buying opportunity at the moment for example the GGP share price has reduced somewhat over the past 12 months but the activities that HAV in particular with more drilling are just growing that resource, there was a recent resource update, resource reserve update from GPP for HAV and it had increased to roughly of more than six million ounces in global resource with a reserve component there as well
- and that was an almost 50 increase on the the previous initial resource estimate so and drilling continues at the site, so you know we could see another 50 increase in the resource estimate in the coming months out of that deposit and of course it's moving past PFS into feasibility and the decline is making good progress down to the ore body so really our, it's a very fast track project
- from our first drill holes in 2018 to where we are now in 22 with a major advancement of the project and ore is going to be taken to Telfer from HAV, that's the current plan so a lot of infrastructure at Telfer with a plus 20 million tonne per annum plant there
- it extends the life of that operation as well it's and really…. obviously GGP was approached by a lot of parties back in 2018, 2019 and really we chose Newcrest as partner because it was a natural fit with the Telfer operation and exploration skills and their mining skills and their production processing skills, it was a seamless fit for HAV to become part of the Telfer operation which it will be which it is now really and it'll be contributing to the next generation of production for Telfer going forward

* Yeah I mean it's an interesting area around Telfer because you know literally a stone's throw away, you've got one of the largest tungsten deposits sitting there then you've got your stuff there yeah you know I seem to think Paterson’s again one of those regions where not a lot of work is done and if you look at the dots on the known deposits they're all quite big yeah, you've got Nifty you've got your stuff and then you've got Telfer so the Paterson have already several degrees of monsters there already but yet you don't hear much about it you, don't you know it's not like the gold fields or even you probably hear more from the Victorian golf fields since Kirkland make the major discovery there yeah then you have about the Paterson, it just sort of just moved along do you think there's more elephants in the Paterson
- oh yeah definitely there is for sure as you pointed out there's a number of elephants there already and Rio Tinto’s Winu very large and HAV is very large also Marichidor and Nifty
- so there…and there's a lot of cover and it's just a matter of seeing through that cover and getting the drill holes in the right place really

* Look I really appreciate it, fantastic story have we missed anything do we have we missed anything about this Hav story
- oh if we did, maybe we can catch up for a follow-up chat at some point yeah but I can't think of anything at the moment

* Look I really appreciate, it's part of what I feel that you know it's good to go in public because these kind of things get tend to be forgotten and they're in words not in you know in a video really appreciate it, had I had a great time, I am fitting my curiosity as well at the same time, Coffee with Samso is all about coffee and we've teamed up with Florence Drummond who has been on our show a few times and we try and sort of do uh a collaboration with what she's doing, she’s part of the indigenous women in mining resource Australia and we come up with these coffee packages that we give to uh happy victims of Coffee with Samso but yeah again thank you very much for your time and like I said I hope we have a chat again, great to see you and appreciate your time.

The End.

Download as PDF:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/yi8q8s76 ... 2.pdf/file

Notes from Callum Baxter Interview with Coffee with Samso - 02 July 2022

Interview: https://youtu.be/QyuCoTk0Yiw

***Quick edit of very messy YouTube Transcript export, removed small sections here and there***

*Welcome to the coffee store where we're having our discovery expiration series, this is our second episode and it's taken me a while to get this man on camera Callum Baxter who was a founding member of GGP, the story today is all about the discover Havieron (Hav). Maybe you can start by introducing yourself and let us know who you are how you and drive the story?
- Thanks Noel yeah it has been a while and but it's good to be here and to be able to have a chat now, my background is an early stage exploration geologist, I started working in the industry in the early 90s and I completed my undergrad at Curtin and then completed masters in all deposit geology here at UWA
- In the early 2000s, early parts of my career I was involved mainly in gold exploration in remote parts of western Australia and I was fortunate enough to be part of the discovery crew for the Nimri Jundee deposits up north of Wiluna so that was quite an exciting time in the early mid 90s and then I moved into more global exploration in places such as Africa and Asia looking for nickel deposits and other types of gold deposits
- And then in the mid 2000s myself and another geologist by the name of Paul Askins who was the exploration manager of Shell Billiton’s previously
- We decided to take a company to London and list it on AIM of the London stock exchange and that was really the start of GGP then back in 2006 with that initial IPO on AIM so very much again early exploration focused company but looking for large opportunities in under-explored areas and we weren't afraid to go undercover so that that was in the mid 2000s when undercover was probably not the flavour of the month
- But we developed a series of exploration tools and strategies to try and push undercover in different parts of the world mainly focusing on Australia because the political risk is relatively low in Australia and there's some fantastic opportunities here in Australia for undercover exploration

*In terms of what you're talking about undercover I mean that's very early time to even thinking of undercover I mean if I go back to my memory, money wasn't that easy to come about and undercover drilling was obviously expensive so when you listed this company when you talk undercover were you already thinking you know 400 meters or were you thinking smaller numbers, or was that the big picture that you're saying that the big elephant is that kind of scale?
- Well it's easy to convince yourself that undercover is worthwhile pursuing and whether it's 100 meters or 400 it all depends on the size of the prize really so you look at the mineral endowment of Australia and it is fantastic and of course all the good deposits that poked out of the ground have been found so there's still a lot of monsters lurking undercover out there and so we probably weren't targeting 400 meters depth at that stage in the in the mid 2000s
- Sort of moving into 2010, we pushed into the eastern parts of the Uganda craton in western Australia where we recognized that there was a buried greenstone belt we could see it on aero magnetics but we weren't quite sure how deep the cover was but some of the early drilling that we did out there proved that it was greenstone and also the cover sequence was anywhere between 180 and 350 meters deep and that project we called Ernest Giles which is still in the GGP portfolio today and we've had a lot of success there defining a large mineral system which has gold and also nickel potential
- The drilling to date has been very broad spaced we started with 800 by 800 meter vertical RC holes, 800 by 800 that's the XY pattern on the surface and then closed that down to 400 by 400 so we're really moving into areas that are completely greenfield and then utilising the current drilling technology to tap sort of very large mineral systems
- From about 2010 we're active on the ground on that project and so it's still a very attractive opportunity out there because you know there are very few places in the world which with such low political risk we can have a commanding position of a whole greenstone belt that hasn't had mineral exploration carried out in a major way, so those kind of opportunities were always very attractive to us

* Because for those that are not sort of in our space 800 meters is a long way a long way right - It's like you can't see each other to some degree and so when you say you, you're drilling those holes obviously there must be a geophysical target because I can't think of anything else you would chase out there other than a geophysical target right?
- yeah well the original opportunity was identified through geophysical data sets for sure, so that was primarily airborne magnetics and also very helpful is ground gravity
- can get some fantastic data sets using ground gravity equipment these days and also using some sort of a bit left of centre geochemical techniques such as mobile metal ions, it's a bit of a blunt tool but it still sort of gives you an indication of whether you're in the ballpark or not and when you combine say that in a basic sense the three data sets such as aeromagnetic gravity and the mobile metal ions you can start to develop targets
- which is then when we deploy the 800 by 800 meter drill spacing to give us a flavour of how deep is the cover, how easy or difficult is it to drill through the cover sequence to get to the basement rocks, what are the basement rocks, what is the alteration sequence in the basement rocks and is it telling us that we're in the right ballpark and we managed to tick all those boxes with Ernest Giles

* Sorry to interrupt but mental capacity at that time to go after this must be that we are chasing a big elephant right; would that be correct?
- yeah that sort of always goes with the with the GGP story is that we are chasing elephants here and no we're not looking for 50-100 000 ounces, we're looking for big systems that are plus five plus ten million ounces of course you need a system of that scale to justify dealing with the cover sequence and we're always looking for big targets so you should get an indication if you are drilling on 800 by 800 meter centres that you are nearby or on top of one of these systems

* Because you're expecting the smoke to be large, wider and to that scale right I assume that's the thinking is that if you can't sniff these things with that kind of spacing then you are really only chasing something small?
- that's right, yeah and there are there are some very good small deposits which are suitable for certain types of companies but we were always really focused on big scale stuff that would really be a company maker, of course the risk it's slightly more difficult sort of terrain to engage and uh quite often the understanding of what we were trying to do wasn't there, but still we did have people that understood the story and wanted to come on the journey with us through investing in the company or in the AIM IPO so it did have its challenges and because quite often we're moving into quite remote locations but that's good in a sense as well in that you're not really dealing with legacy matters in terrain that's been crawled over quite a lot and you don't have certain things trying to influence your thinking and where you should be drilling holes or what exploration techniques you should be using because we're really pushing the envelope all the time moving into a new headspace and you know new terrains chasing big deposits

* Because, obviously the price I mean if you look at - what is at Havieron now, I just took this off the latest presentation - it's 2.9 million ounce at 3.7 gold equivalent which is you know at - only probably a big company like Newcrest who has Telfer could handle that, so it was the discovery and as well as the opportunity of someone so close to that can take it on right, to facilitate the exit for you guys between listing 2010 and discovery in 2017?
- yeah we listed in 2006, so in our first involvement at Havieron was in 2016, there was 10 years there yeah where we were working on other projects such as Ernest Giles

* So how what were the challenges like, because for those guys who think and a lot of investors out there think everything is an overnight success, that's a long journey before you even tasted success, how was that challenge for you guys you know because you're out there marketing the company?
- I think people were really backing the people and they're a lot of the investors or all the investors realize that this is a high risk endeavour as all early-stage mineral exploration is but they realized that we were chasing big prizes and they were happy to take the near-misses along the way until we came across Hav and turn it into something much bigger than what it was at the time

* I mean that's what I tried to tell in, sort of share that thought is that it is a long long journey, it is a high risk game and it's about backing the right management and picking the right management hence backing them and letting them do their job in that sense right and if I don't know whether you can agree or disagree that most of the successes that we hear out there has been that kind of formula is that picking the right management letting the management do the job and then the rewards come later right, whether it's six years or 12 years or three years or one year, it's just letting that , so that as I was trying to figure it out you know that that's a long time between dreams and there must be times where you guys sit there and thought hey you know I don't know if this is going to happen or not you know?
- yeah quite often you do reflect and think gee really I’m quite privileged that my time hasn't run out yet and people are still willing to provide support to let us chase these big deposits and we were vindicated in 2018 with our series of first drill holes at Hav which was quite an achievement at the time

* So now let's get to the discovery you've gone there you've got this geophysical target and you're saying let's go and drill can you share with us that thinking then because you haven't drilled those two holes, the series of holes you've got this target and do you at that point in time, are you going back to the guys, hey you know, I got this really good idea, how was that experience?
- yeah well let's take a little bit of a step back in that as you said you know there were some years of no major discoveries and we were always looking for new opportunities and in 2016 we were shown this geophysical target in the Paterson region in northern western Australia about 50 kilometres east of Telfer and it was held by a private company based out of Melbourne and they'd had it for a number of years and really couldn't generate any traction with it and so when I looked at it I thought really this if, we did some initial modelling which was slightly out of the box on the data sets that were available and I realised that there was some potential for some significant scale here and I went to the management and some of the shareholders and I said there's this opportunity here, it's in quite a remote location but it's not far from a very large deposit Telfer which has been in operation for many years
- the infrastructure is pretty poor in the general area apart from Telfer itself it's a long way from a regional centre, 500 kilometres from Port Hedland but if or and there is a fair amount of cover we're looking at a roughly 400 meters of cover, but if there is something here it could be something quite substantial
- so we all decided that it was worth the risk again it was a high risk opportunity but having worked undercover at places such as Ernest Giles we developed an undercover skill set in terms of how to how to tweak our geophysics how to tweak our geochemistry
- we knew who had the right kind of drill equipment in the industry in western Australia because that's obviously a very important part of the whole process is that if you can't successfully drill the holes then you you're really using a lot of money to achieve nothing so you want to make sure those drill holes are going to get to target and do it as efficiently as possible
- so we felt confident that we had all the components in place that we could effectively test this target relatively efficiently, spent a lot of time modelling the geophysics, roughly nine months backwards and forwards different iterations and that enabled me to sight the initial drill holes well enough
- also I was fortunate enough to be able to visit the Telfer operation and stay on site for a couple of days and look at the core library where there'd been two holes that had previously been drilled by Newcrest into HAV geophysical target in the early 90s and there was more than 100 metres of mineralization in the first hole so it really clued us up to how we can use our geophysics to accurately target the best, as best we could mineralization and sort of tell the potential of it with our first drill holes
- and so it was a bit difficult to communicate our strategy to the market because the market really wants to know what kind of deposit are you targeting and intrusion related gold systems at that time weren't well known in the market you know the average retail investor really understood west Australian gold fields quite well, those kind of deposits, but intrusion-related gold systems they're not porphyry’s and potentially they're not quite a skarn type deposit so we really invoked an IOCG model but really just to talk to the market in that the market understood IOCG deposits as being rather large of scale, had potential for multiple commodities such as gold and copper for example and some of our modelling did lean on the IOCG processing techniques somewhat and it was just a convenient box to put our exploration target in at the time and we realised that Telfer itself isn’t an IOCG it's an intrusion-related gold system it's
- so anyway we developed four drill holes and we spoke to a number of drill companies in western Australia and we realised that there was a couple that had the had the experience and the equipment to do it and we were fortunate enough to get the support of DDH1 out of western Australia to help us drill our first holes at the property and we intersected over 100 metres of mineralization in the first drill hole which was quite an achievement

* I think 103 meters at 3.5 grams ton and 0.93% copper, yeah so I mean that was the first hole that went in and you got that, was that sort of like - is the precision there or was that luck, an element of luck or what I mean to get that on your first hole on a geophysical image or geophysical target I should say it's not like pinpoint surgery?
- right well if you look at the….. there's been a recent resource and reserve update from GGP and if you look at the scale of the system and the volume you could say it was relatively easy to hit once you were down there through the cover sequence, it's a large beast and yeah the drill holes were difficult, it was difficult to miss it really okay I know that that… it's probably not quite right in that description because we did manage to intersect one of the highest grade parts of the deposit that's been found to date which is still rather large in itself but we were fortunate that our geophysics had honed in on the higher grade or one of the higher grade portions of the ore body which we're pulling outstanding grades with drill hole intercepts equivalent to a thousand gram metres roughly

*When you say, can you say that the core, the higher grade system gave a unique signature that you guys were able to harness or pick or define?
- it’s easy to talk about in hindsight because but when you're looking at it without drilling a hole, it was it was good that we were able… we actually modelled it very well and the thought process that we put into it was exactly what it was when we drilled it and so we were very fortunate that that the way we were thinking was what it actually was in the ground with the magnetic signature and the gravity signature and the mobile metal iron geochemistry at surface
- as I mentioned before it's a it's a bit of a blunt tool but still gives you a flavour of what's happening even through 400 meters of cover and we were definitely getting all the primary elements such as gold and copper coming through in the mobile metal ions and also with the density contrasts in the deposit because of the distribution of the breccia and the and the massive sulphides
- we could see that in the gravity and we could also see the distribution of the magnetic portions of the ore body as well in the magnetics and our modelling was beautiful, I haven't seen anyone do a better job to date, I’m sure there has been but it’s maybe not in the public domain but exactly we're pretty proud of what we achieved

* So you would say that's a type of deposit that fitted your modelling perfectly?
- well I shouldn't say perfectly but it fitted it very well

* I mean when we're talking in exploration you hit it as well as you guys have yeah and when you felt it's almost perfect right because we know how hard it is to do it yeah and that that's a good topic because obviously geophysics they played a big role with uh the MMI that you talk about, do you think that the development of the technology at that time had been the key because maybe the technology 10 years ago I’m just postulating here would not have given you that definition and how does that if that was the case and how would it be at 2022? Do you think the definition has gone another level, what's your thoughts on that?
- yeah certainly the techniques we were using have been around for many years but a lot of the equipment these days is a lot more sensitive and can be Much more easily deployed in the field and certainly when Newcrest were doing their exploration out there in the 80s and the early 90s they Newcrest were the first ones to recognise the airborne magnetic anomaly and drilled the first hole into Hav and their first drill hole was solely based on aero magnetics and their modelling was very good you know, they got over 100 meters of mineralization in their first hole and of course back in 1991 it was actually quite difficult to drill a 500 meter deep core hole in an exploration sense in a very remote location, so they did a very good job and achieved quite a lot at the time but fast forward as you said to 2016 or 2018 when we were out there we had the benefit of much better gravity data
- Newcrest had collected a gravity dataset, ground gravity dataset in 1991 but of course the height control is very important to gravity data and the height control back in the 90s was quite blunt and today we have the benefit of much better spatial accuracy with the gravity data sets so that enabled us to better refine the gravity data set which we did
- we recollected the gravity before we drilled a hole and also techniques such as MMI you know they weren't around back in the 90s and or it was MMI actually was around in the 90s but it wasn't very popular so yeah we did have the benefit of sort of 20 years of more advanced technology and also we had a generation of geophysical modelling as well
- geophysical modelling is quite an iterative process where modelling will happen and a result will be found and holes will be drilled and then okay we didn't hit it why didn't we hit it we think this is why or we've got it this is why we got it so then that gets fed back into the modelling process over 20 years and so the modelling becomes much more precise and the output is much more understandable even for just geologists such as myself
- i don't have any formal studies in in geophysics but having us used it for over 25 years and being involved in the process I understand the process and how to apply it to exploration it's really quite important it's quite powerful tool which a lot of companies don't engage with
- I know from my experience in gold exploration in the 90s geophysics apart from aero magnetics wasn't used very much but now I think it's pretty much a routine tool to be part of the exploration toolkit

* Yeah no I mean we see it a lot and I think and I try to get the guys I speak to explain it because there's just so many different ways of doing it why they're doing it and the understanding not to say even for the retail investors out there or the guys anyone who's listening it's more complicated than it is because as you said you know most people have brushed by the thought is the modelling part is another skillset the actual collecting is a skill set and the technology is what it is, so I’ve had discussion with people where they, you know the technology part has gone so much higher than even at 2016 to now we're it'd be interesting to see whether using the technology today the equipment and the definition that what you would have seen would have altered the modelling that you would have thought it's just one of those things right as we progress?
- Yeah there's still geophysical data sets being collected over Hav, to look at the the bigger scale picture you know looking at crustal scale features to guide exploration in a broader sense in the region so it's still very powerful tool being deployed today even after the deposits have been found
- there's obviously there’s potentially others out there that are still to be found in the region

* In 2010 when I listed my company I i was obviously scouring looking for projects I did come across a guy who had a project in the Paterson, and I had similar thinking that you know go where others have not been or don't go but here's one comment to me says oh no it's really remote because you know forward driving on the top end of difficulty so it's really remote and you're raising two and a half that time three million you still think hmm yeah maybe this is not the game you know, let's go find something else because but looking back you know I mean that is what it is right you got to be committed and you got to have a vision of what you are chasing and I think these kind of stuff, I mean as you say right the deep stuff the big elephants are still sitting there and I I’m probably you I don't agree or not but I reckon there's still lots of elephants who are sitting in the ground that you know even and if we even go into the well-known areas like the gold fields all the easy stuff is found and there's still easy stuff being found but the deep stuff the big elephants are still there, that's my feeling even in the in the gold fields.
- oh definitely yeah the mineral endowment in the gold fields for example is enormous and there's a lot of it undercover, Ernest Giles is a classic example of that one of the GGP projects where it's undercover has had relatively little exploration and it it has all the alteration systems and the right rocks and gold's been intersected in the RC holes, it's just a matter of now really getting an all-grade intercept of tenor enough to support uh mining of a deposit under 200 metres of cover

* I mean I obviously talked to a lot of guys in the industry and I even I’m feeling the appreciation of the potential that's out there, it's all about how much money you got in your wallet to chase it but the potential is huge like Galileo found a new Palladium province in Norseman, yeah every man has dog been through Norseman right but they've still found something yep and then if you look at some of the Gopala, it's again a bit like the Paterson where not a lot of people have been still a major deposit been found I mean I’m involved in an IPO now that projects there but you sort of look at it because geez the prospectivity is huge yeah you know it's not trampled on a bit like the gold fields but uh yeah and people have been there you could brush it off so there's nothing there but you know it's there it's you've just got to go looking for it I guess?
- yeah that's right and have the right mindset and the support as well and also deploying the right exploration tools for the job to get the right targets to drill

* So what's you know Callum Baxter doing now like post this great success you know, what's on the agenda apart from hanging out?
- yeah I’m spending time with friends and family and of course I live on the south coast of west Australia been there for more than 12 years now so just taking some down time after working pretty hard particularly the last few years since 2018 the first drill holes at Hav
- it was a very busy period so again yeah just re-engaging with friends and family and haven't really pursued any new opportunities as yet but I’m sure that'll come in and also with the Covid travel restrictions and working out of the UK for many years I’ve only just been able to return to the UK and had a visit earlier this month and caught up with some of the colleagues that I’ve worked with for over 15 years out of London, that was very good it's good to see all they're all very enthusiastic and enjoying continuing their exploration activities

* Any sparks happening, anyone pulling you back into the into the system?
- not as yet no, no I’m still pretty much at arm's length still enjoying catching up with friends and family but I’m sure inevitably it'll come that I’ll be pulled back in

* So what's you know now that you look you're sitting back watching from afar what's your thoughts on what's happening because we as geologists as we just found out we actually worked in the same place back in 1992-93 , what's your thoughts now because my I’ve been giving the narrative that this has been two years of what we in our industry has never seen the amount of money the continuation of interest we’ve had to pull back over time corrections that happen but I’m still saying that the this resource boom or positivity has longer legs, what's your thoughts I mean you've been in the street as long as I have so what's your thoughts?
- I agree with you, the commodity prices have been remarkably resilient in the past six months or so with the general slowdown in the global markets the commodity prices have remained high and I still think the industry is very buoyant
- it's received a lot of support, there's still a lot of exploration happening, the producers are receiving a good price for their product and the industry's really robust so I’m quite pleased of where the industry is in you know in terms of the market and global economic forces at the moment
- I think there's some, a lot of share prices have retreated a little bit I think that’s because some money's been taken off the table in the market globally so it's a good value buying opportunity at the moment for example the GGP share price has reduced somewhat over the past 12 months but the activities that HAV in particular with more drilling are just growing that resource, there was a recent resource update, resource reserve update from GPP for HAV and it had increased to roughly of more than six million ounces in global resource with a reserve component there as well
- and that was an almost 50 increase on the the previous initial resource estimate so and drilling continues at the site, so you know we could see another 50 increase in the resource estimate in the coming months out of that deposit and of course it's moving past PFS into feasibility and the decline is making good progress down to the ore body so really our, it's a very fast track project
- from our first drill holes in 2018 to where we are now in 22 with a major advancement of the project and ore is going to be taken to Telfer from HAV, that's the current plan so a lot of infrastructure at Telfer with a plus 20 million tonne per annum plant there
- it extends the life of that operation as well it's and really…. obviously GGP was approached by a lot of parties back in 2018, 2019 and really we chose Newcrest as partner because it was a natural fit with the Telfer operation and exploration skills and their mining skills and their production processing skills, it was a seamless fit for HAV to become part of the Telfer operation which it will be which it is now really and it'll be contributing to the next generation of production for Telfer going forward

* Yeah I mean it's an interesting area around Telfer because you know literally a stone's throw away, you've got one of the largest tungsten deposits sitting there then you've got your stuff there yeah you know I seem to think Paterson’s again one of those regions where not a lot of work is done and if you look at the dots on the known deposits they're all quite big yeah, you've got Nifty you've got your stuff and then you've got Telfer so the Paterson have already several degrees of monsters there already but yet you don't hear much about it you, don't you know it's not like the gold fields or even you probably hear more from the Victorian golf fields since Kirkland make the major discovery there yeah then you have about the Paterson, it just sort of just moved along do you think there's more elephants in the Paterson?
- oh yeah definitely there is for sure as you pointed out there's a number of elephants there already and Rio Tinto’s Winu very large and HAV is very large also Marichidor and Nifty
- so there…and there's a lot of cover and it's just a matter of seeing through that cover and getting the drill holes in the right place really

* Look I really appreciate it, fantastic story have we missed anything do we have we missed anything about this Hav story?
- oh if we did, maybe we can catch up for a follow-up chat at some point yeah but I can't think of anything at the moment

* Look I really appreciate, it's part of what I feel that you know it's good to go in public because these kind of things get tend to be forgotten and they're in words not in you know in a video really appreciate it, had I had a great time, I am fitting my curiosity as well at the same time, Coffee with Samso is all about coffee and we've teamed up with Florence Drummond who has been on our show a few times and we try and sort of do uh a collaboration with what she's doing, she’s part of the indigenous women in mining resource Australia and we come up with these coffee packages that we give to uh happy victims of Coffee with Samso but yeah again thank you very much for your time and like I said I hope we have a chat again, great to see you and appreciate your time.

The End.

Download as PDF:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/yi8q8s76 ... 2.pdf/file