GMA Resources plc

GMA seeks secondary listing, may be TSX
(Source: Miningmx)

Allan Seccombe
Posted: Wed, 06 Feb 2008

[miningmx.com] -- GMA Resources is likely to begin a secondary listing – most likely on the Toronto bourse – before June this year as its CEO Doug Perkins tries to lift the AIM-traded group’s shares to 20 pence and clear the way for acquisitions.

Production has started at the Amesmessa heap leach gold project in southern Algeria and full production will be reached in the second quarter of this year, Perkins told Miningmx on the sidelines of the Mining Indaba in Cape Town.

Full production for the year is estimated at 77,000 oz, which is well below the 100,000 oz Perkins told Miningmx a year ago the total Algerian project could deliver.
then I’m on the hunt
The change between then and now is that the Tirek carbon-in-leach project has been suspended until a 10,000 tonne stockpile of material with a grade of 10 grams/tonne or more is built up.

This could take a while.

“It’s more likely that we’ll build another heap leach mine before we get to build the CIL plant,” Perkins said.

There are plans to expand production at the project, but Perkins declined to be drawn on the scale, saying: “Speak to me in six months time.”

GMA has cast an eye over projects in Mali and Central African Republic but rejected them for various reasons. On the radar screen are potential projects in West Africa, an Arab country and possibly something in Latin America, which Perkins described as "challenging, but the valuation is too high."

“My short-term goal is to get the share price to 20 pence (from 12 pence now) and then I’m on the hunt,” Perkins said.

“I had better have a new project before the end of 2008 otherwise I’ll lose my crack team,” he said, referring to the team that established the Amesmessa mine.

“We are looking for distressed operations that need to be fixed,” he added. Exploration projects that have drilled out resources would also be considered.

GMA wants a secondary listing and has considered Johannesburg, Dubai and Euronext, but the preference appears to be the TSX Venture Exchange.

“I just know the Canadians will go nuts for a company like this,” Perkins said.

Cash costs are at $500/oz, with 10% of that coming from a two-year training programme to give workers at the project the necessary skills. Securing skilled workers has proved to be difficult because the project is deep in the desert.

Once the training has been completed and the company increases the ounces it produces at the project, it will reduce the costs, a high proportion of which are fixed, he said.