Southern Cross Gold Consolidated Ltd. (SXGC) Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning, everybody, another day, another news release, and this one is a little different. And this is a kind of release that really humbles me actually. It's announcement of another key appointment, the Head of Technology and Processing. We've added a gentleman called Joe Seppelt to the team. Standing back, building a team going from an exploration project to a predevelopment project and ideally, of course, to a mining company that we aim to be is not easily done, and it's only done with the right people, any business, anyone who runs a business here would say, I say the same thing. Of course, it is that. But this project attracts great people. The mining business is short right across the board of skilled people. And this amazingly globally significant gold project with a 20% antimony kicker, if you like, as a potential byproduct is a project in its own right that attracts great people, being 60 kilometers from Melbourne and accessible where people can send their children to school in Melbourne and travel out to the project. For example, I live in the beautiful town of Kilmore or the Shire Mitchell, ideally and add to the community there is a wonderful thing and that's what we're doing in spades. Now back to Joe. Joe recently joined us. He is going to be in charge of all things processing. So he's going to be in charge of looking at the mill design for the project. So once we take the rock out of the ground, we crush it, we grind it. We separate the gold through gravity and float an antimony gold concentrate. He's going to look at and has already started around the design of that plant. We're looking at a number of different scales from an earlier scale, smaller operation to a larger operations. So we're able to do the engineering, offset work or sensitivity work around that. He will look at the metallization that we're also researching. He will work very closely with Ryan Austerberry, our COO. So it's just another key appointment. And Ryan, who is going to mine it and Joe who's going to process it, are a super team in themselves. So Joe's experience is extensive. He's in his early 40s. He's come across from BHP, where he built or designed and built the Carrapateena mill there. So he knows how to build projects and he knows how to run them. He's worked previously at Olympic Dam at Cadia, at Hillgrove. It's just one of those amazingly well-trained industry professionals that we are humbled that he's literally come to join our team. And we are building this project to mine it, and this is just another example of all those key appointments, CFO, COO, Head of Processing and Technology, the Head of Exploration, Head of Permitting, all these key people are now in place. And that's how you build a project from exploration to predevelopment heading towards mining when you have a really serious intent to mine a project. And that's what we're aiming. That's what our board wants. That's what our shareholders want, and that's what we're doing in spades here and Joe is a great example of that. So what is the secrets to building a great company in the exploration and predevelopment, development space? People, number one, Joe's appointment is very much part of that, having a great project is absolutely a part of that yesterday's release, where we added another 460 meters below gold and the like, demonstrating that, that system essentially doubles. That was a big swinging hole that we took off the tee and we hit a right down at depth. So that was an amazingly fundamental change in how we understand this project. So that was a great result also. So keep an eye on what we're doing, there's 10 rigs going to 11 shortly. There's 40-plus drill holes that are in the lab or that we're drilling. We've got all the surface work and development leading to going on underground. We'll be announcing our underground contractor soon for the decline work. So there's so much happening at the exploration and development stages of this project stay tuned.