Goldplat Plc (LON:GDP) Chief Executive Officer Gerard Kisbey-Green caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the completion of 2 additional capital projects, the weighbridge installation and progress in the New Year
Q1: We’ve just seen news out about the completion of 2 additional capital projects, now the shotblast facility represents a new line of business to Gold Recovery Ghana, can you tell me more about what it is and how it’ll benefit GRG?
A1: Yes, absolutely. We have 2 similar operations in South Africa and they’ve been a very profitable revenue stream for us over the past years and we recently took the decision to build a similar one and move it and install it in Ghana and it really is a standard shotblasting facility in a container where you can literally shotblast or sandblast material or metal and recover gold where appropriate. We’ve identified quite a large market in Ghana and all through the region of these materials and so we look forward now to starting to procure the material and process through the plant. We expect to make probably up to about $300,000 a year revenue from this particular installation, I know that sounds small but every bit counts and the main thing is that it’s a new revenue stream and we can, if the market’s there, we can expand it significantly and quickly.
Q2: Now, the weighbridge installation at GPL seems quite insignificant really, can you tell us more about the impact it’ll have on the business?
A2: Of course, basically all the materials that we source from outside sources comes in by truck and all of it comes at a cost. Up until now, what’s happened is the trucks have been weighed at third party weighbridges, we have to pay each time a truck gets weighed and it’s quite a significant cost. Also because they’re third party weighbridges there’s often queuing times and standard time and even over night-time, if the trucks arrive during the nights. Now having installed one on-site, we can weigh according to our schedule, we can weigh 24/7 and so should have no queuing. Another knock-on effect is that we’ve been able now to negotiate better transport costs because the distances are reduced and also we can now control and schedule the tenement coming into our plant and therefore schedule better the materials going to the circuits.
Q3: Ok, that makes sense. Now, Goldplat Plc has had a run of positive announcements over the last 6 months, all good news regarding capital projects, how long do you think this will last?
A3: Luckily, we managed to complete a number of projects in the last 6 months and really what we did was we scheduled and prioritised those projects which were most important and critical for us to do, those that would generate the most revenue and cash flow for the company and those that we could fund internally, very importantly. A lot of those have come to the end but we still have a lot of larger projects to do and I think we’ve indicated to the market that the next project which will come through is the estimate of the stock dam resource and that is in process as indicated to the market and we hope to have a result within the next couple of weeks, so within December. The other thing is that we have announced that we’re talking to various parties in South America about procuring material for the Ghanaian operation and the moment anything has advanced enough, we’ll announce that to the market. So those are 2 reasonably imminent announcements but we do plan to continue the good news because we plan to continue progressing in the New Year.
