Founding director and former CEO of Equinox Minerals to Present at the Sydney Mining Club
Sydney, April 26, 2013 AEST (ABN Newswire) - The story of Equinox and the development of the Lumwana copper mine on the New Copperbelt in the NW Province in Zambia is one of the most stunning mining stories of our time. A stellar $5m to $7.7bn value build made at the hands of our speaker this month, Craig Williams.
Craig and close colleague, the late Bruce Nisbet, well regarded exploration geologist's built Equinox from scratch. In the 1990's the pair were approached by Anglo American to explore for base metals in Africa.
After a number of years working under Equinox in a JV with Anglo, it was decided to launch their own project, entering in 1999 into a farm-in deal with Phelps Dodge to earn 51% in the Lumwana copper project, then considered uneconomic at the then copper price in the low US 60c/lb.
Equinox managed to fund a $10M feasibility study in 2003, but Phelps Dodge decided not to continue in the project. In 2005, Equinox bought the 49% stake from Phelps Dodge for $5M.
From a $5M market cap junior, Equinox progressed to building a +$1,000M copper project, commissioned in 2009, which this year will produce more than 100,000tpa of Cu in concentrates. The resource exceeds 1.2Bt at 0.6% Cu.
Equinox had bigger ambitions and in early 2011 it launched a $4.8B hostile takeover for Lundin Mining which was not successful and in a time of a weaker share price, Equinox was itself the subject of a bid by China Minmetals. A higher offer was made in April 2011 by Barrick Gold and Equinox accepted the $7.7B dollar offer, a 14,000% gain for shareholders over 11 years.
This is a fascinating story covering exploration, project finance and corporate games on a grand scale. Craig is still active in Africa and this story is one not to be missed.
2:30pm on Thursday 2nd May, 2013
Click here to book now:
http://www.sydneyminingclub.org
REMINDER - This event will be at the Westin Hotel, Martin Place, Sydney Australia
Contact
Sydney Mining Club
T: +61-2-9416-0633
F: +61-2-9416-0617
WWW: www.sydneyminingclub.org
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