les speaks

Yandera pushes on
Gynnie Kero | National aka The Loggers Times

THE feasibility study conducted on the K4 billion Yandera project is nearing completion, Marengo Mining president and chief executive Les Emery said.

Speaking to The National in Port Moresby yesterday, Emery said the company had spent more than K300 million on the project.

He said: “The K300 million was all equity funds chipped in by investors, funds were spent more into drilling and not so much on exploration.”

Drilling deposits revealed Yandera as having a resource of 600 million tonnes. Based on mining proposition, this indicated a 30 million tonnes a year throughput for Marengo.

Predictions were that the project would go into production in the next three years.

The miner owns 70% of the project while the PNG government takes the rest.

Describing Yandera as an “elephant project”, he said he was pleased for a small company the size of Marengo to operate the world-size copper project in Madang.

Emery expressed confidence in the project due to the global demand for copper.

“What a great sight it was to come in as a small mining exploration company and eight years on, we are still here, we are a single project company

“The world would not find new and major copper discoveries for probably a decade.

“World’s consumption depends on mines and they run out eventually.

“I am very positive on copper and when you look at China, the perception is that it is slowing down its growth of 7.5%, but would still consume commodities more than what the world produces – whether it be iron, zinc, copper, and I know copper’s got a future and Yandera’s got future,” he added.

Emery stressed that the supply of electricity is a challenge, adding that Yandera would require 120 megawatts for its operations.

Marengo is now a Canadian-registered company employing 135 Papua New Guineans and five expatriates.