Latest / Best of Business / Damian Spring: Santana Minerals Chief Executive on Australian miners predicting Otago gold mine could make $3.8 billion

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Damian Spring: Santana Minerals Chief Executive on Australian miners predicting Otago gold mine could make $3.8 billion · Best of Business

• 0:09
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• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Australian miners reckon they could make up to three point
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  Speaker 2: eight billion dollars of pre tax profit from a planned
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: gold mine in Otago. The company reckons they could get
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  Speaker 2: one point two five million ounces of gold from the
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  Speaker 2: mine near Cromwell, and with the price of gold currently
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  Speaker 2: at record highs, the profits are set to be huge.
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  Speaker 2: Damien Spring is Santana Mineral's chief executive.
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  Speaker 3: Hi, Damien good Oheather, how are you very well?
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  Speaker 2: Thank you? Do you reckon the price of gold's going
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  Speaker 2: to hold?
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  Speaker 3: Oh? Look, it's thanks to be holding at the moment.
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  Speaker 3: You know, it's come off it's ultimate high of around
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  Speaker 3: five the other eight hundred. But even at this price,
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  Speaker 3: it's still in terms of the history of gold price,
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  Speaker 3: you know, very high.
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  Speaker 2: I saw somewhere that even if the price of gold halved,
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  Speaker 2: you guys would still make a decent profit.
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  Speaker 1: Is that right?
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  Speaker 3: Well, that's right. You know, this is a gold project
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  Speaker 3: that those international investors that are interested investing directly gold
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  Speaker 3: projects are set up and taking notice and it is
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  Speaker 3: a high grade, high value gold mind net we're posing
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  Speaker 3: here and it's going to produce dividends both for those
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  Speaker 3: investors but also New Zealand in terms of royalties and
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  Speaker 3: jobs and services and such on.
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  Speaker 2: How long before you start pulling it out?
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  Speaker 3: Well, we've got to get our application into the fast
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  Speaker 3: track process where and that is a minute and given
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  Speaker 3: the powers of that piece of legislation in terms of
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  Speaker 3: a fast tracked decision making process, it could be as
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  Speaker 3: early as next year.
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  Speaker 2: Oh you could actually be digging as early as next year,
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  Speaker 2: could you?
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  Speaker 3: That's right, that's what our time frame is, pending the
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  Speaker 3: fast trek approved.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, So how much damage are you going to do
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  Speaker 2: though to the land in order to get this gold out? Like?
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  Speaker 2: How much digging are we talking about?
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  Speaker 3: Are we talking about an open pit? Mind? Centered on
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  Speaker 3: the deposit called Rise and Shine or RAS. It's about
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  Speaker 3: nine hundred meters across up to two hundred meters feet.
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  Speaker 3: It's an open mine. So yep, it's like any other
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  Speaker 3: extractive in New Zealand and plenty of them. We certainly
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  Speaker 3: do dig up the ground, but we have a full
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  Speaker 3: process of understanding what those depicts are, how we're going
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  Speaker 3: to mitigate it, and of course before we start. We've
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  Speaker 3: got a very sound closure plan, so we put it
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  Speaker 3: back to a landform that is a commensurate with the
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  Speaker 3: surrounding landscape.
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  Speaker 2: Right, so when you're done with it, you basically make
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  Speaker 2: it look nice again. How long before you're done with it?
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  Speaker 3: Well, our current mind plan that we just released this though,
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  Speaker 3: it's us mining for fourteen years, okay, but of course
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  Speaker 3: expiration continues, so we'll see what that produces and maybe
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  Speaker 3: hopefully we find them more.
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  Speaker 2: Never know, So, Damien, the locals who are objecting because
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  Speaker 2: of the fact that they think it's going to look
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  Speaker 2: ugly have maybe got a bit of a point, haven't they.
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  Speaker 3: Oh look, I think we've been engaging with effective parties
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  Speaker 3: and neighbors and community groups right across the region of
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  Speaker 3: Central Otago. They believe what they believe. We've engaged experts
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  Speaker 3: in all the various areas, including landscape and visual and
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  Speaker 3: we rely on those experts to work within the framework
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  Speaker 3: that we have here in New Zealand, and we believe
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  Speaker 3: we've got a solution for those concerns.
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  Speaker 1: Brilliant.
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  Speaker 2: Hey, well, you know you got to break eggs to
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  Speaker 2: make an omelet, so best of luck to you. That's
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  Speaker 2: Damien Spring, chief executive at Santana Minerals.
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