What Happened to Global Warming??Hi Everyone,I have to admit...

What Happened to Global Warming??
Hi Everyone,

I have to admit that I am a bit of a global warming sceptic and right now I think I am backing the winning team in the global warming debate. Currently, I am in London attending the Mines and Money conference and last weekend I was in Ireland. We went over to Ireland to review progress on the dismantling of the Galmoy lead-zinc processing plant which Meridian has bought. On the drive out to Galmoy from Dublin, the temperature got as low as -6C. Here in London today it snowed most of the day and the temperature barely got above freezing all day. Brisbane has just recorded the lowest average temperature for November for many years. What is going on with the weather? Originally from Tasmania I am used to a bit of cold weather, however -6C in Ireland was getting just a bit beyond my comfort zone. However, I digress....



Our trip to Galmoy was very instructive. The dismantling and packing of the Galmoy processing plant is proceeding well with the main mill building and all its components dismantled and the cleaning well advanced. There has been a bit of a hiccup in the last few days with the high pressure water cleaners freezing, but that is only going to cause a minor delay. At this stage we are on schedule for the Galmoy plant to be on a boat and heading to Australia sometime in March 2011. It is amazing to see the Galmoy plant all pulled apart and a lot of it packed into containers ready for shipment. The last time I saw the plant was all in one piece and as a fully functioning plant. The next time it will be fully functional again will be on our Lennard Shelf Project, with an upgrade to allow it to process 750,000 tonnes per annum of Lennard Shelf lead-zinc ore. With the temperatures up on the Lennard Shelf never going much below 30C, the plant will go from one extreme to the other, not that it will affect the efficiency of the plant. The next time I will see the plant will be April 2011 when it is sitting on the dock in Darwin ready for transport down to the Lennard Shelf Project.

Photo: Meridians Commercial Manager Ian Wallace at the Galmoy Mine, Ireland

The last time I attended the Mines and Money conference in London it was three years ago and I was still the MD of Discovery Metals. At that time I was attending Mines and Money to showcase the Boseto Copper Project in NW Botswana. Surprising as it may seem now, it was a bit difficult at that time to generate interest in a copper project in Botswana. Now with copper near US$4/lb there is a lot of interest in the copper projects being presented here in London. Our main goal in attending Mines and Money is to seek out a new advanced project to bring into the Meridian portfolio. Our strategy with Meridian has always been to have a pipeline of projects at different stages of development, so that after the Lennard Shelf Project is bought into production, we will have a second project going through a feasibility study. Our goal is to have this pipeline of projects and never to be just a single project company. With our Thomson Fold Belt Project in northern New South Wales, we have the greenfields, conceptual end of the project spectrum covered. Therefore, what we are looking for now is a project at Scoping Study or Pre-Feasibility study level which we can move our technical team onto once the Lennard Shelf Feasibility Study is concluded next year. There are a number of interesting projects we identified today which we will follow up on tomorrow and over the next few weeks. Our goal is by early 2011 to have signed up a deal for our next major advanced mineral development project. Watch this space for developments!

The Mines and Money conference is growing into one of the must attend conferences with over 3000 delegates and many companies here promoting their projects. London historically has a focus on African projects and this year the African Projects are still well represented. In comparison to when I was last here 3 years ago, there are many more projects being showcased from Russia, central and eastern Europe and clearly these areas are starting to attract a lot more investment. These are areas of the world which you dont hear a lot about in Australia but there are some emerging projects which, from what I have seen, have strong possibilities of going into production.

As I write this BLOG it is snowing outside, however my thoughts are with our exploration team on the Lennard Shelf and our drilling program at the Cadjebut Splay prospect working in 40C+ heat. Just a bit of a contrast to my current environs. On the other side of the Australia we are about to start drilling on our Thomson Fold Belt Project and whilst it has been a bit wet in that part of northern NSW, I bet it is a lot warmer than here in London. I am very excited about starting drilling at Thomson, as this is one of the more exciting greenfields exploration regions to emerge in Australia for many years. Whilst it is relatively high risk, the potential for the discovery of copper-gold deposits is significant. We are about to find out if any of the geophysical anomalies we are targeting are related to copper-gold intrusions and it's always exciting when targets are tested for the first time in a totally new terrane. The only way new mineral provinces are found is to develop targets based upon good science and then to have the courage of your convictions to go and test your ideas. We are about to do just that!

Cheers

Jeremy


1 Dec 2010


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