Having only been discovered in July 2012, Nova started production in October 2016. How was IGO able to accomplish this, and what are the project’s production expectations?

Globally speaking, there are few projects that go from discovery to production in this kind of timeframe. We are still progressing the development underground and expect to have it fully ramped up to capacity by September 2017. Several factors have made this achievable. Number one, WA is a fantastic mining jurisdiction. Secondly, this is a world-class deposit and success breeds success. Working with a world-class deposit makes navigating financial hurdles much simpler. IGO also benefited from the downturn in the mining industry by gaining ready-access to the right people, equipment, and contractors to fast track the project. Nova will produce 26,000 mt/y of nickel, 11,500 mt/y of copper, and about 1,000 mt/y of cobalt over an initial 10 year mine life.

IGO holds a 30% interest in its Tropicana JV with AngloGold Ashanti. How has the project evolved since it commenced production in September 2013?

Now that the project is running successfully, we are looking at opportunities to enhance value. As an open-pit gold mine with an initial nameplate capacity of 5.8 million mt/y ore throughput, we first looked to increase capacity by investing incremental capital into the processing plant. We finished that work in October 2016 and are now running at an ore throughput rate of 7.5 million mt/y. The second opportunity to optimize the resource in an open pit mine is to drill beneath the pits to demonstrate that the ore body continues at depth. Over the last two years, we have carried out drilling to demonstrate that was the case, and are now executing the necessary engineering to enlarge the pits and increase our reserves. As is the case with Nova, the next objective at Tropicana is to increase regional exploration. Given that Tropicana represents a new type of gold mineralization in Australia in an unexplored belt, there is significant opportunity to find either the next Tropicana or satellite deposits that can feed into the centralized processing facility. In 2017, we are dialing up regional exploration expenditure around Tropicana and expect to spend about $A15 million between the two JV partners.

What strategy does IGO have in place to enhance the value of the Jaguar operation?

Our focus is all about extending mine life and unlocking the potential to scale up the operation. Jaguar comprises a series of VMS deposits, which generally occur in clusters. We are currently mining the Bentley deposit, but deposits at Teutonic Bore and Jaguar have previously been mined. Going forward, we aim to find more of these VMS deposits. To that end, we recently discovered the Triumph deposit, where we are currently completing our maiden resource estimate and conducting a feasibility study. Triumph would give us a second mine at Jaguar and the ability to deliver more ore to surface, which would allow us to expand the processing plant. We expect that with very little incremental capital expenditure, we will be able to increase plant capacity at Jaguar by about 20%.

IGO’s projects tend to be geographically concentrated. Why does the company utilize this strategy, and are there intentions to expand globally?

IGO utilizes a belt-scale approach. If the fertility of the land on which a project sits has been established, consolidating the surrounding area provides an opportunity to drive the next discovery on the belt and to leverage existing infrastructure. After acquiring Nova through the merger with Sirius, we have completed an additional four transactions through JVs and takeovers in order to consolidate a larger landholding around Nova on the under-explored Fraser Range. We understand this belt better than anyone else and want to control the belt to maximize our chances of making the next discovery on the belt.

People talk about expanding into new frontiers and in a county like Australia they commonly hold the view that all exploration opportunities have been tapped. However, there are still new deposits of a belt-scale nature out there waiting to be targeted. That being said, our stated purpose is to deliver long-term shareholder value by pursuing a diversified risk model, both through commodity and geography. WA is a fantastic jurisdiction, but as the company grows and we begin to improve the overall quality of our portfolio, we will be looking for more world-class, large-scale projects. If we restrict ourselves to our own backyard, then we limit our opportunity of being successful. We are looking to identify the next jurisdiction that will enable us to discover the next tier one project. Independence Group is a company that likes geographic focus because it allows us to maintain strong regional management, and we will be looking to apply that same principle in the next jurisdiction that we invest in.

How have innovations in technology aided IGO in its endeavor to enhance the efficiency of its projects?

Improving the overall operation requires adopting a range of technologies that unlock discoveries and enhance efficiencies. We are early adopters of several technologies that help to map underground openings and deliver continuous, real-time analysis of the mineralogy of the process streams in the processing plant. On the geophysics side, IGO has been a leader in electromagnetic detection and an early adopter of 3D seismic in a hard rock situation. At Tropicana, the joint venture is operating one of the few sites worldwide leveraging Caterpillar GPS control for the whole of our mining fleet to direct mining activities and dispatch ore and waste to the right stockpile or dump. In a project like Tropicana, 70% of the cost structure is mining. In the regular benchmarking that AngloGold Ashanti conducts across its 30 projects worldwide, Tropicana comes out at the top end, demonstrating the benefits that are delivered from implementing these kinds of technologies and operating a continuous business improvement model.

How has IGO adapted its operations to take advantage of the opportunities presented by big data?

The amount of data generated has introduced a paradigm shift in how companies operate. There needs to be a team of people with the expertise to analyze the data and use it for decision-making. IGO has been trialing embedded programmers in the organization so that we have the capacity to write code ourselves and better leverage the information required for and between proprietary packages. Often we need packages that may come from two different vendors to talk to each other, so we are moving to embed that capacity within the company.