are all motivated, because they love it, and they’re interested.
No one’s forcing anyone to be here. You know they’re here
because they want to be here. You can trust them. It’s very much
a team approach.
The other thing is making sure people aren’t scared to have a
go. There’s nothing worse than people being inhibited, and they
don’t want to make a mistake because that will look bad. We
encourage people to embrace a challenge and not to be scared of
making a mistake, because it means they’re going to go for it a
bit more. We want people to challenge themselves.
People want to see vision. If you visit our site at DeGrussa you
can sense that there’s an energy. There’s a momentum. No one
is dragging their heels. Everyone looks smart. They look proud.
Everybody’s happy. There’s a smile on people’s faces.
The biggest thing for me is achieving that teamwork, creating
that passion, ensuring that there is a level of excitement
throughout the organisation. It’s either there or it’s not there.
There’s no textbook for all of this. You develop a sense of
leadership and teamwork through experience, and also from
what you learn from others. My father always said to me, ‘There’s
only two places to be: you’re either in the team, or you’re out of
the team’. If there’s a hairline fracture, the team’s gone. It may
sound obvious, but there’s a lot of wisdom in his words, and I
often impart that advice to people within the organisation.
Please tell us about the establishment
of Sandfire?
Sandfire was founded in 2000 by three individuals, initially
as a private concern, and then it listed on the ASX in 2004.
For two years prior to listing, our exploration activities were
funded by private capital. We took extensive risk in those early
years, pegging open, vacant crown land which we believed was
prospective for major new mineral discoveries.
We were busy running Kimberley Diamond Company at the
time, and we had been in the diamond business for about 15
years. In difficult circumstances, Kimberley was taken over in
2007
and because we were the largest shareholders in Sandfire,
we said ‘We might as well focus our efforts where we’ve invested
most of our money’, and that was in Sandfire.
It was a humble beginning really. Essentially it got to the
point where we had taken all the risk, and a couple of us could
not afford to fund it privately any longer. We decided that it was
either time to give up, or share the risk with others. Having
worked in junior resource companies and capital markets in
jurisdictions all over the world, we understood that the concept
of having a public company and being able to share the risk, and
share the rewards, with other people is very valid.
We then went through the trials and tribulations of exploring
and having no success. We were in the middle of the global
financial crisis, when the share price had fallen from 40 cents
to just 4 cents, and we had limited funds in the bank. It was all
about survival. So in one day, just before Christmas 2008, we
retrenched almost everyone. It was absolutely heartbreaking!
Our objective was then to try to have some exploration success
with gold in order to survive. We were drilling the Doolgunna
project, initially with no real success. It was probably the tenth
year that we had worked that particular project. A young girl,
who had been retrenched but was back working for us on
contract to look after the drill rig, sought approval to drill some
extra holes. The rig was leaving the site, and by the time her
request to drill the extra holes got through to me and I approved
it, she said ‘Oh, that’s good because I’ve already done it!’
And they were extraordinary results. The transition was
explosive. Since then, we’ve discovered some $6-7 billion worth
of contained metal in the ground and Sandfire now has a value on
the share market of around $1 billion. Geologically, we believe
the potential to find more is excellent.
What has the Sandfire journey been
like for you?
The journey has been amazing, and unbelievable, but it certainly
hasn’t been an overnight success. We started as a private
company before going public. We experienced the depths of
despair not that long ago, the elation of the discovery and, more
recently, the sense of achievement of moving into production.
You can imagine the pressures which that emotional roller-
coaster puts on your family life and well-being. We had all our
eggs in one basket… in roulette terms we bet all our money on
black – it’s just the way it happened.
At Sandfire, we’re trying to achieve things that have purpose
and add value on a sustainable basis. The whole is better than
the sum of the parts, so it’s rewarding in that sense. You start to
think a lot more clearly, and it’s incredibly enjoyable. It becomes
a lifestyle. It’s part of waking up in the morning.
Make no mistake – I pinch myself sometimes. We’ve got a
wonderful project, so it’s easier! A lot of people can’t quite believe
it’s happening. They’ll say ‘We know it’s happening, but we still
can’t believe it’. We have gone from putting our first drill-hole in,
and making the discovery, to making sales just three years later.
We have developed a highly sophisticated operation
comprising an open pit and underground mine and state-of-the-
art on-site treatment facility. It’s not a large operation but there
are still plenty of logistical issues involved. The entire process of
developing and operating a mine involves a variety of dynamics,
ranging from indigenous and environmental to technical and
operational. It takes a lot of careful planning and execution.
It’s always
challenging.
It’s always
fascinating!
A lot of it is
an amazing
adventure.
MINESITE 2012
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