I had a very interesting and informative chat with Peter Ball today. I had not spoken to him before and wanted to get to know him before PDAC. He tells me he will be there with Peggy and others.
First I was very impressed with Peter. He is not just an IR guy, he is an engineer with lots of varied experience including underground experiance as a ventilation engineer with Hudson Bay in Flinn Flon Manitoba.
I was surprised that Paul Keller is no longer at CMM. I had checked him out through sources and he was given a very good rating by people that had worked with him. His family just decided not to move to Val D'Or.
Today's news release is self explanatory. They are mining now as they said they would.
Peter tells me that Fran Scola is a very bright man that will be good for CMM.
As you know Lamaque is being managed by an operating committee of 4 people including Scola and Peggy. In my opinion it was a wise decision to signal to the market that decisions are now being made by more than one person. Perhaps this will pave the way to appoint someone to acquisitions in the future.
One interesting point that Peter made is the following: The current objective is to run the crushing circuit in the mill for at least 14 days in May at 1200 tons per day. If they accomplish that target, Deutsche bank will release $5M to CMM. That gives them 2 months to upgrade the mill , install all the new equipment and do some test runs.
At Peru, the strike was an attempt to get back wages that were owed by the previous company that were not part of the agreement with CMM. Peter was down there after the strike and found the workforce in good spirits and not bitter at CMM.
The existing mill has a capacity of 5000t/day so for efficiency reasons they are reducing the capacity to 3000t/day. The target for 2010,2011 respectively is 1200/2000t/day.
Peter encouraged us to call anytime so don't be afraid to call him.
SN
