May 30, 2025 • 45 mins
On the show today we’re joined by Neil Ringdahl to pick apart the challenges at Ivanhoe’s Kamoa-Kakula.
Neil technical background made him the perfect person to walk us through the news that shook Ivanhoe. The seismic events & flooding that’ve disrupted Africa’s biggest copper mine has put an already jumpy copper market on edge, providing plenty of talking points.
In addition, the Koala jumped on with us to share perspectives on why this led to such a volatile 25%+ drop, and what could happen from here.
Neil Ringdahl's Twitter: https://x.com/neilringdahl
……………
TIMESTAMPS
(00:00) Introduction
(03:26) Neil Ringdahl on MoM
(05:23) Understanding the KK challenges
(23:10) What next for Ivanhoe
(33:30) Dearth of talent attracted to mining
(42:05) Koala on MoM
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
JD, I'm not sure if you've been paying attention right, but
there's a bit going on with Kokola.
So some, some brew pillars are burst effectively and the extent
and severity of this situation is, is still kind of yet to
fully play out. The both Ivanhoe and Zejin have
put out some commentary to the effect to describe what's
happening. And it's early days.
(00:21):
So we still don't kind of know everything, but the, the share
price has fallen that 20% already.
I'm talking about about Ivanhoe in in this case.
And as everyone's kind of tryingto piece things together, I
thought it would be just absolutely awesome if we got the
insight of Neil Ringdial, who, who is a mining engineer who is
so like pointed and thoughtful and great at explaining like
(00:45):
what he is interpreting based onthe press releases.
I caught up with Neil this morning just on a, on a, on a
call and I asked him some questions, mostly because he put
out a couple of tweets, which I,I just found so insightful as he
as he spoke about what, you know, his interpretations of the
events are, how serious they might be and what the
implications could be for for Ivanhoe A. 100% mate.
(01:07):
It's the biggest copper mine in Africa.
It's one of the biggest copper mines in the world.
It's been a glowing success story for a number of years now.
Obviously owned by Ivanhoe as well as the Jin and the
Congolese government. And like you said, the the news
has sort of rocked the stock market.
So we tacked on a little bit of a conversation with the Koala at
the end as well to get a more ofa, a market's kind of
(01:29):
perspective on this and how he kind of interprets the event.
But I'm super excited to share the the technical conversation
with Neil as he sort of understands it, his experience
in underground operations. Very excited to bring bring
Neil's voice to the potty. Let us know guys if you you want
more from from Neil in the future.
I I really enjoyed speaking withhim and but first mate it's
(01:52):
Friday, which means it's called KCA Friday.
Normally I like to surprise Adamon Fridays, but today he's told
me to call Kca's recruitment manager, Christian Dean.
Hello. Trav.
What? You saved my number, Adam.
Switched me up. What would it take for a guy
(02:13):
like me who has zero undergroundmining expertise to to?
Become an underground miner. They got a manual.
License, Yeah, yeah, that's goodstart yeah for.
Sure. Like we're, we're all about
helping our clients. So it's what they want if they
need actually little people and they want to come to us.
(02:35):
But in all honesty, like coming from those experienced people,
people with the skills that they're looking for, people that
are a bit tired of find. So we generally have to go
kicking, excuse the pun. We're all this pretty much ex
operators. It's people they trust, people
that have done it so we can relate to the people we're
(02:55):
speaking with, obviously know some of those nuances that might
be required and understand what they actually need in both the
candidate and and the client. We know what it's like to be on
site. If they're not coming down the
hall, if you don't have the people, well that's not working.
So when they call that you really need someone and I need
them yesterday. So having that sort of mindset
(03:15):
as opposed to just like just recruiting, you know, so it
happens. I think that helps.
Just called KCII. Like to talk about things that
I'm interested in and I've always been interested in having
her. I should think before, you know,
this is negative news, but I must just say I'm very impressed
with the ability of that companyto execute on building new mines
(03:41):
and power plants. And you know, they're very,
very, very good at that. You know, they're done projects,
they've met, you know, projects have been on time and they've
had the glitches and but they'vebeen like worked through them.
And I guess this is another one,but I'm also a shareholder.
I like to talk about, I like to talk about stuff I invest in.
(04:06):
And I know what it's like to be on both sides of the story
enough. I've worked for public companies
before in executive positions. And, you know, there's that
famous phrase that goes, you know, if there's a bad press
release in for a mining company,then the news must be very bad,
very bad indeed because they always have to try and present
(04:28):
the bad news in the best possible light because of the
obvious impact. It's material, material
information. So it's always quite difficult
to decipher these things. And I felt I just wanted to, you
know, share my own thoughts on what I thought was really going
on behind the scenes and what might be the case, what might be
happening there. Yeah, I think that it's been
(04:51):
super useful because originally it appeared like, you know, the
the owners of this operations that Gin and Ivanhoe disagreed
on. Maybe.
Maybe it was semantics. Or.
Or the sensitivity as it relatedto what was actually happening
here. But there there was a
geotechnical event of some sort,but the the severity of it kind
of took a little bit little while to understand.
(05:14):
You. Were pretty astute, like early
on when there was that initial understanding that there could
be a bit more to the story. Yeah, I mean, my ears picked up
when the first press release came out that there were some
problems. And then then I got very
concerned when the second press release came out and there was
(05:35):
some objection to the Zigen press release from Ivanhoe.
So the two major shareholders had a disagreement.
And I think it wasn't really anything, as I said in my first
tweet, I didn't think it was anything malicious.
I just think that maybe there was a little bit less
understanding or maybe there wassome concern about the the
possible misunderstanding of theaudience what was in the
(05:57):
decision press release. But essentially both press
releases were saying the same thing.
The one said that there was spalling and falls of hanging
wool. And the other one said that
there was some seismicity and, you know, pillar bursts, OK.
And when you have pillar pillarsbursting, you get spalling of
the pillars. That's what it's called.
(06:18):
When you know the size of the pillars flake off, that's called
spalling. And you'll get bits material
falling off the hanging wall as well.
And it's obviously very hazardous.
If anybody's in that area, thesethings happen, you know,
seismics, the site, it's mining induced seismicity.
In other words, the seismicity wasn't there.
That's very lucky, in my opinion.
It wasn't, it wasn't, you know, that part of the Congo is not
(06:41):
very seismically active as far as I'm aware.
And so it has to be mining or induced.
And and that's, that's quite normal for many operations.
You know, even in ALMA here in Honduras, we have, we also get,
we also get pillar bursts from time to time, but we don't have
the same kind of very widespreadboard and pillar layout that
they've got at, at Kakula. And in the shallow mining
(07:06):
environment, like at Kakula, you've, you've got a, you know,
when you see, when you hear about seismicity in a, in a
shadow mining environment and multiple, you know, multiple
events or multiple, you know, you know, bursting of pillars,
that's, that's very big cause for concern in any mine.
OK, It's OK if you have one now and again, but if you have
(07:28):
multiple to the extent that yourmain accesses, you know, you
have to, you have to get people out of there and that, you know,
you have to start looking at alternatives to replace your
pumping system because your pumpcolumns have broken because of
the because of the police bursting, you know, that
suggests that there's something more serious, OK.
(07:49):
Can you help me understand that the difference between, yeah,
like experiencing this in a datemine versus a shallow mine and
why? Why the extra level of concern?
Well, with deeper mining you getmore elastic behavior to the
rock because of the depths and you also have a stronger
horizontal stress component normally as well as a strong
(08:12):
obviously a very strong, much stronger vertical stress
component. With a deeper mine, you've got
all this weighted rock above you.
You also get horizontal stress, increase horizontal stress.
And with ultra deep mines, like,you know, the deep platinum
mines and gold mine in South Africa and in do some of the
deep mines in North America thatI'm aware of, you know, you,
(08:35):
you, you get the, the rock actually behaves more
plastically. And so your support regimes are
different, OK, to what you need.You know, they're more of a
yielding support. And you have to, you have to do
a mine layout that's, you know, that suits, suits whatever
environment you're in. But the shallow mining
environment, you're dealing morewith dead weight.
(08:57):
OK, so we're talking anything less than some people might
think is deep, but it's 1000 meters or less is from where
where I grew up was considered shallow.
And so that's, that's the environment we're talking about
a cooler, cooler. I don't know what the depth is
now, but it's probably less than500 meters at this stage.
(09:18):
I know that all body goes down to about 1000 meters, but they
haven't got that deep yet. And so it's fairly shallow.
And so when you do a mining layer, and it's also a flat ore
body. So when you're mining a flat ore
body, you're obviously going to leave pillars to support the,
the beam, the weights of everything above you.
Those pillars have to be designed for the entire rock
(09:39):
mess above the pillar. And but that's, you know,
overhanging between the excavations between each pillar.
OK. And, and then how those pillars
will fail will depend on the size and the amount of stress on
them. And so if you make them smaller
or if you start with a big pillar and you might not, you
(10:00):
know, or we make them too small,depending on the rock
characteristics themselves, it will they will fail the other
flail plastically or you know, they'll burst.
OK. And you know, when a pillar
bursts, I think it's important to understand that it can still
have a yield resistance after bursting.
(10:22):
It just means that the solid part of the rock in the middle
of the pillars definitely cracked.
OK, And you have broken rock on the sides that Spall out OK, But
as long as you keep that intact,it's still got some support
resistance left. OK, Things can happen where you
have if you have a very hard orebody, for example, and maybe the
(10:44):
foot wall or the floor is very soft, you can have what will
happen there is the pillow will stay will will punch into the
football and and it'll it'll seem as if the floor is coming
up, but really the pillow is punching into the football.
OK. That's a different type of
failing mechanism. You can also have the reverse if
you have a soft hanging wall andyou have a hard ore body that
(11:06):
you're mining and can punch intoyour hanging wall and that's
going to be that's going to alsobe pretty bad.
In this case, from what I've read from the technical reports,
the foot wall is very hard and in the all body itself is quite
soft and in the material on top of it is also quite soft.
So they have to do a lot of shotcreting and you know, a lot
(11:27):
of support, a lot of shot creating is just basically
putting the concrete skin on theinside of your tunnel.
And then you know, you know, your usual, your whatever
support, your local support regime they've got in form of of
of bolts or anchors. And then you've got your pillars
which are holding up the mass ofeverything above it.
(11:49):
And so I don't know what what isbursting.
We don't have enough informationavailable to us to know exactly
what's happening. It could be the concrete skins
on the shotcrete that's bursting, but I don't think so.
I think what probably the pillars are solid rock pillars.
And even though the rock is verypoor, the whole body is very
(12:10):
poor. It's it's, it's, you know, it
crunches and when it crunches, it makes a burst and it gives,
it gives, you know, it releases energy rapidly in that as that
happens. And then what's worrying to me
though, and that can happen fine.
You know, sometimes you'll have a small pillar that's kind of
taking a bit more load than thanthan than the others around it.
(12:35):
Maybe there's bigger spans between that pillar and others
and it'll fail. It'll fail like that.
It'll be a big thump underground.
You'll hear it and it'll give you a scare and that pillar will
Spall and if you're nearby you'll be OK.
As long as you're not standing next to it, you'd probably be
OK. But when you have multiple
pillars failing, that suggests that they are losing.
(12:58):
So that beam that pillar fails is a little bit of movement.
Now that hanging wool beam has to be supported by the remaining
pillars, which are still stiff, but they also start failing.
Keep putting extra. Extra like a runaway train.
OK, so you'll get a whole area that starts to fail and that's
what's concerning. OK, if it was just one or two
(13:22):
pillars, it would be OK, but it seems to be widespread.
Otherwise, why would they have to evacuate the whole mine?
OK. And so that's very concerning.
And so it's not really the failure mode, which is what was
the the objection of of the Ivanhoe guys were, you know,
objecting to what surgeon miningwas saying in my opinion, and
(13:44):
this is just my opinion, OK. You know the I think I think
it's I think it's something moreserious.
I'm more concerned about the number of pillars that have
failed. And it'd be great if we got some
clarity from the company on thatand I'm sure we'll get that.
But you know, they have, they have to be very careful how
they, how they, you know, how they, how they explain this, you
(14:06):
know, to avoid liabilities. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a risk
that was date detailed in, in their technical reports 2020
like initially in 20/20/19. And is that a risk that's there
just because of the, the mining method itself or is it to do
(14:27):
with the, you know, the, the ground conditions as well, a
kind of combination of all thosefactors?
Is, I mean, I don't, you know, at this stage it's too early for
us to comment on whether it was a bad mining method or obviously
there was something that that was planned that never went
according to plan that resulted in this.
(14:48):
So I mean, I'm actually looking at the technical report right
now here and it says, you know, in the 2023 it talks about, you
know, major structures, namely the waste fault structures that
still contain soft infilling. And this coupled with tight
filling during drift and full mining operations, it is
unlikely seismic activity will occur on these structures.
(15:09):
It's it could be the fault structures that are moving.
OK, but the fact that they've talked about pillars bursting
and spalling, I think it is a pillars.
OK. Then they'd say in the next
sentence of this technical report.
The bracket pillars that will beleft along the large structures
will also assist in containing seismic activity.
(15:29):
So if you have a fault going through an ore body and you're
mining along the other side, youput a pillow on either side of
the fault. You don't actually mine on
against the fault or through thefault except for your excesses.
And you leave a pillar. Those are called bracket
pillars. And that's to prevent because
you'll have a different stress regime in this block, which is
defined by the by the fault on the one side.
(15:50):
It'll have different stress and this block will have different
stress depending on the load. And so you can get movements on
a fault and they can correct that can be seismic, OK.
And that's what that's what happens in the deep mine very
often, OK. And I think that's what they
were concerned about here, OK, But it's not a deep mine.
Nevertheless, it's a consideration that was taken
(16:13):
into account by the geotech guys, OK.
And an induced localized goes onto say, hey, the induced
localized seismic response associated with strain bursting
and or pillow bursting, which isthe same thing may occur.
This will be contained a result of tight filling and correct
sequencing during cut and saw mining operations.
(16:34):
The seismicity in this case mustbe related to the pillars
failing. OK.
And then probably because they were too small or the mining
spans were too large for that rock mass rating before that
particular rock time. OK.
And and you know in the previoustechnical report that said there
(16:56):
was not enough information. They need to do more work on it.
I'm sure the team, they have been doing work on it, but they
made a decision based on recommendations by subject
matter experts to do a particular mining method and
then they went and mined it. And now what's happened is they
found that the regional low bearing capacity of this pillar
seems to be aggression. OK.
(17:18):
And that's the question that they are probably looking into
right now. Is it that bad that they have to
go and redevelop a whole, you know, new mine adjacent to the
existing mine? Or is it is it going to be
something that is, you know, maybe they can manage, maybe
(17:40):
it's just, you know, a localizedarea in this in a one in, you
know, in a in one section of themine.
They can still continue to mine.And then they have to ask
yourself the question, what mining method were they using?
And it was a drift and full mining method with backfill is a
brand new backfill plant on site, fully commissioned, very
state-of-the-art. But there could have been a
(18:02):
management decision there. And that's what I seduced it as
well. There might have been a
management decision to delay thebackfilling and just mine the
primary drifts and then not not come back and backfill them,
just mine the primary drifts andkeep going because it's such a
huge ore body. You could probably get away with
that as long as you don't go back and rob any pillars.
Maybe maybe that's what maybe that's what the issue is.
(18:24):
Maybe they, you know, maybe theyshould have backfilled this, OK.
And or maybe there was secondaryextraction going ahead of time.
People were taking a bit of a chance.
It could be an operating thing. OK, The geotech consultants will
be quick to jump on that. If that is the case, I'm sure,
OK. And I'm sure the truth will come
(18:47):
out in the wash, but it could have just been a case that the
pillar designs were, you know, it's normally multiple factors
as well that causes something like this.
Like any incident in the mine, there's not one factor that
normally results in an incident or or injury or a fatality.
There's normally multiple factors.
Just like, you know, when you look at an aircraft
(19:08):
investigation, I'm sure you've know about the Swiss cheese
municipal where you have these walls of safety and they but
each have the each have, they'renot, they're not fail safe and
they've got holes in them. And so if the holes line up
perfectly, then that's what happens.
So you've got to think like that.
Yeah, so. The, the, the way around this,
(19:33):
would it, would it have likely have just been to well, OK, so
maybe it was maybe, maybe if it was the lack of back filling,
back filling might have maybe mitigated it.
But could there also have been an issue with the pillar sizes
themselves being too too small? Yeah, of course, could be.
Yeah. I looked at the mining plan in
(19:56):
my tweets and I tweeted a picture of it.
You know, you could see what they did in 2019.
And then here's a photograph of the mine.
What's being mined? In 2000 and not a photograph,
but as built part of the mine and you can have a look, you can
see, you can see the drifts thatthey've mined and they mine out
very quite a large area. It looks like about 500 meters
(20:18):
more in span over maybe a kilometer or two.
It's I mean they've been mining at quite a right there.
And so that's a big area that's mined.
And it's like, you know, coal mines developed like that too,
which is a very flat ore body. So it's very similar to coal
mining, underground coal mining.And when you do board and pillar
(20:40):
mining and coal mining, you know, you've also got to bear in
mind that your pillars have to be designed for for the full
load over the full span. And if one area fails, the
weight be the load in that area that's failed can transfer them
to the adjacent area. And I think that's what's
happened here. And unfortunately, it looks like
(21:00):
it's gone a bit close to the development into the, you know,
the main, the main axis development it might have, that
might have gone and affected themain access declines.
And I only only come to that conclusion because the pump
pumping system was damaged and they're looking at replacing,
you know, getting a new pumps and new and new lines to to keep
(21:24):
the mind dry. And I would imagine those lines
will probably be in the main access decline if you would
think that would be in a more protected area.
So. So that is a concern, yeah.
When you, when you highlight those two photos, 1 from 2019,
yeah, the other one from 2023, what are you comparing there and
(21:46):
and sort of seeing that's different?
You can see the block that they said room and pillar mining
area. OK, I look at that room and
pillar mining area there in scale and I can see the green
declines going down there. And I switch over to the next
picture, you know as built in June 2022 and I can see that
room and pillar mining area. They've done some room and
(22:08):
pillar mining there and then there's lots of fingers going
along there. If you look very small, they're
all Gray fingers. And those are the developments
and in between all the pillars, OK.
And I'm not sure which of the pillars have failed and which
have not, but I have to imagine that all of those pillars have
gone and they've moved over towards the North Port or access
(22:30):
area, which is looks like the mining gets quite close there,
OK, to that E service perimeter,E perimeter service drift that
they've got planned there, OK. And I don't know if you can show
the audience. Yeah.
But that area there between the North Port and the east
perimeter service drift is what I think is where I imagine the
(22:52):
pump column might be. That service drift is a decline
going down, probably downed up by the looks of it.
And and we've got to see, you know, that axis will be cut off.
The part of the analysis you, you, you know, you've put out
there that grab grabs me and clearly the the share market as
(23:13):
as well was kind of your, your thumb sucking implications that
there might be for both both my life and and operating costs.
How, how did you, how'd you comeup with with those numbers?
Good question. It's I guess it's a it's what I
(23:36):
think could be the implication. I mean, if you look at the again
at the map, I imagine that N portal ramps pretty good down to
the bottom of the straight section there.
But maybe you have to redevelop all the way around to get to
access, you know, you have to develop all around, right around
(23:58):
that caved area. And the worst case scenario,
it's quite a lot of development.There's no scale on this
particular plan, but those are big ends.
Those are 6 by 6m ends, twin ends.
They're, you know, forming the east service perimeter drifts.
There's two of them running downthere.
So you can get an idea. It's a couple 100 meters, few
(24:19):
100 meters, maybe 1000 meters ofdevelopment that you'd need to
reconnect to that existing design for the east perimeter
service drift. And then you have to go back
into the ore body and develop into the ore new new access
drifts. So I don't think it's that
unreasonable to say it could be anything from 6 to 18 months if
(24:41):
you have to redevelop the mind if that whole area is unsafe to
go back into. But as I said, those pillars
might be good enough. You know, if the size MIDI
settles down and the whole thingsettles down, you may still be
able to go back into the area. That's where the pillars are
burst and you may still be able to use some of that
infrastructure again, you know, and do it safely.
(25:02):
And then just brack, you know, and then the impact will be a
lot lower. We'll, I'm sure everybody's
doing their sums and their design work and the inspections
and that and and working out what to do.
And we need to give the company some time to to come up with a
plan how to how to, you know, how to re establish this again,
(25:24):
if we look at the resource and reserve, most likely we're going
to have a decrease in the reserve because you have to you
know, in your reserve caps, you leave pillars outside, outside a
reserve reserve is what you can actually put in the mill.
So any pillars that you leave behind, stability pillars you
leave behind will have to come out of the reserve, out of the
(25:46):
reserve. And obviously if this has
failed, we need to be more conservative with our design.
So one would naturally cook 2. The pillars have to be bigger.
OK, it's possible they won't. I mean, if they can work out a
way to backfill and do, you know, complete extraction, that
(26:06):
would be great. But that would be another whole
new mining method altogether. And I don't know what the
geotechnical implications of that would be.
OK, but but but I suppose that'sa possibility.
I think more realistically they'll probably end up going
with bigger pillars and that would mean, you know, how much
(26:28):
bigger pillars do you need? I don't know the answer to that.
But you know, even if the pillars are 10% bigger, you're
probably looking at about a probably looking at about a 30%
reduction in reserves. Yeah, OK, maybe maybe less, but
probably something like that looking at this layout be.
Substantial, OK. But it's substantial.
(26:49):
But it's not. It's not really.
An. Enormous resource.
It's such a magnificent resource.
OK, so that it's just going to take longer to longer to mine
and it'll take them much longer to ramp up to the planned the
planned numbers that they've, you know they've got in their
the phases of phase four phase. I can't remember which phase
(27:13):
they're on now, but in the next phase of expansion, OK.
So it'll just be a slower ramp up and they also obviously doing
homework as I mentioned, I thinkthey'll they'll they'll be
looking at increasing productionfrom Kamoa and maybe they can
fast track the IT seems that Kakula W is not that badly
affected. If you look at the map, it also
(27:34):
seems like you know that South portal ramp is a little bit
further away from most of the minings to date.
So not as much bypass development may be required
there to go and re establish something to the West and maybe
they can get into that a bit faster.
Gotcha. So.
So we've got to wait and see what they say there.
(27:55):
Gotcha. The twin D the twin twin portals
in this case, you would you would you would assume you know
helps the continuity of of operations as opposed to having
like a an elongated period whereyou can't actually mine right,
correct, correct. Yeah.
You know, and I guess, you know,you look at all the plan
development there, it's quite hard to see, you know, with
(28:19):
this, you know, simplified diagrams for this would be much
better to see more detail. And I think there is more detail
available there. I haven't looked.
Ivan has been very good at presenting detail on their
expansion plans as they go with,you know, presentations and
videos. And I've been, you know, been
looking at these for months and months and years and years.
(28:40):
Every quarter that I think everymonth they put out a new photo
album of each of their projects.And it's very interesting to see
what they do. There's a lot of very good info
that I get from from those photoreports and, and, and what their
display is really impressive stuff.
And with this team that they've got, they'll, they'll do the
(29:01):
best that they can do. It's unfortunate markets don't
really give credit to teams, youknow, for success really.
They've quicker to give this credit to discredit the team
when they have something like this.
And I've mentioned that in one of my comments to some of the
questions that got to these tweets is, you know, it's it's
(29:23):
very easy for us to say, yeah, it could be management and it
could be management, right? But these guys have done a
really good job, really good jobof it.
So we should give them the opportunity to see what they can
do to come back. Market doesn't care about that,
though. Market's going to sell on the
news, right? Market's forward-looking, yeah,
You know, unfortunately. Done.
It's baked in, it's baked in now.
(29:45):
So you know, so now everybody wants to know well what how bad
is the impact? And it's hard to say with the
information we got and we're really just grasping at strolls
here. But but I try to give it a go
and, and I decided that for now,I'm backing out.
So I sold my stock. And but that doesn't mean I
think the company's going to do badly.
(30:07):
I just think it's, you know, a wise thing to do.
And, you know, I'm sure they'll come up with a plan to resolve
this and, and, you know, they'llget back into it again.
And this is mining it mining hasthese problems.
Projects, they all, you know, wealways say project get delayed,
projects will be late and they will overrun on costs.
You're always guaranteed that tohappen on every project.
(30:30):
This one kind of that's happening maybe a little bit
later in the cycle. We're really in operation, which
is not good, but there's so muchexpansion going on within,
within this, you know, mining complex here.
It's something that I'm sure that they'll be able to deal
with in the medium term. Yeah, yeah, it's we're always
(30:54):
forward-looking for sure. But I don't think any other
company could have could have done what what has been done in
this part of the world to actually bring this operation
online in the 1st place and. The market needs to be patient
because if they, you know, and Iand I guess that's the danger.
That's what happened with the pressure users.
You know, I know what it's like with these things.
Yeah. You know, when you're on the
(31:15):
side of this, something like this happening, you, you almost
go through a phase of denial, OK, And then acceptance, you
know, and anger, you know, all the phases you get when you've
got a terminal disease or something, you know, it's a
similar type of thing. And you have to be capable.
I mean, if you're an executive, you know, responsible for an
(31:36):
operation like this, you can't just go out there and put up.
You got to make sure you have all the facts and you've got to
have it signed off. Then you got to hear what the
experts say and you got to hear what your people say.
And then you've got to make sometough decisions and you've got
to think about how you're going to formulate this to the market.
You've got to try and do it in the best possible light, of
course, because you want to havea minimal impact to your
(31:58):
business, I mean, to your share price really, You know, if we
were honest about it and, and you know, if you think about the
concept of a company, mining company or any company, I have
this rather naive, well told us naive way of thinking about it.
(32:19):
You know the old ways you buy, you buy a company stock because
you believe in the future, your future, you know, and the value
of that stock is should be directly proportional to the
future value of the dividends. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't worry. I still think that way too.
But not not everything. Not everything's valued on DCF
these days in mining. But you've got all these people
who have to short the stock on news.
(32:39):
OK, That makes things really, really difficult, Pop.
Shops. So, you know, it's kind of crazy
that the companies, the share price dropped as much as it has
because you know, there's other mines that this company has
control of. And you know, while this is a
big part of it, it's, it's not 20%.
(33:00):
Right. Yeah.
The the, the, the one part of everything that that couldn't
help but notice, Neil, any commentary was and it relates to
press releases, but Turner's lawof mining press releases.
Now, I actually haven't heard ofthis before.
I'm, you know, I'd love to, I'd love to just just hear you tell
(33:20):
me about that and that relates. There's a there's a newsletter
writer by the name of Mark Turner.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And he's he's the one who's always said that, you know, if,
if a mining company has to put out, given the mining company
has to put out. Boyd News always has to always
present news in the best possible light, you know, So if
(33:42):
it's bad news that comes out, itmust be very bad.
OK. Indeed, All right.
And I guess it's tongue in cheek, but it's true.
You know, unfortunately, you know, we've seen that before
with, you know, with many companies, you know, that have
to release bad news. You know, there's that
(34:06):
Australian, my Capricorn. Yeah, well, 29 medals can be
gone, Copper. Right, 31 medals.
Yeah, OK, It just got worse somewhere such.
A great yeah, I mean, there's a perfect example yeah.
OK, it's sometimes that happens and you know it's mining.
We mining, we say, you know, shit happens, you got to deal
(34:29):
with it so. So that's what happens here and.
And they got to deal with it andthey'll get through it.
And hopefully the whole management team responsible for
this don't get fired. Hopefully they, you know, they,
they carry on going. And if they do get fired, it's
because they haven't done the right job.
They haven't done, haven't made the right decision.
(34:51):
They've made a bad decision. Yeah, OK.
But I imagine, imagine they'll survive it given the great
performance to date. It's in a difficult jurisdiction
as well. And that's part of the problem.
These sort of things, unfortunately are going to
happen more and more going forward because there's less and
less good mining people out there who can, who are able to
(35:14):
run mines and mining companies. You get, you get accountants and
apologies to the accountants whoare CE OS and, and business
development guys and, and bank, you know, bankers who are CE OS
mining CE OS, but they, they don't really know much about
mining and, and, and it's easy to cut costs, but, but is that
(35:37):
really the right thing for the mine?
And, you know, you can get into the whole quagmire stuff.
But I think that's the biggest problem is we've got, and the
mining engineers we've got aren't really that good.
The few good ones that are out there are taken.
And you know, everybody who comes out of university wants to
become a manager tomorrow and noone really wants to do the dog
(35:59):
work, you know, and be a drill operator and A and A and a shift
supervisor for five years. And and you know, they want to
get promoted. And because there's no one in
the business doing mining, no one wants to go into mining and
the kids want to go into mining.There's there's less skills out
there. And so people get promoted
really fast, too fast. And they don't have the
(36:20):
experience and certain experience, you know, even
amongst the miners you get guys who you make, you make, you
know, bad decisions because theyjust don't have the experience.
They haven't had enough time learning from the old timers how
to how to mine and what to look for when you look in a mine when
you go and visit a mine. If I was, if I, if I didn't
already decide to be a finance guy in Yale, I'd be listening to
(36:42):
you right now. And I'd, I'd, you know, I'd
just, I'd, I'd study mining engineering.
And I know because. There's a skill.
Shortage. I'm going to get paid so well in
the future. Right.
But the thing, but I mean the number of of guys, you know, I
take a lot of respect for the old time and minor guys who
didn't go through and didn't geta degree in mining.
(37:04):
And they they are sidelined, youknow, because other guys have
degrees, but they're the ones with the real experience.
They're the ones who teach the people with degrees something.
But it takes time to do that. And if the young guys are high
fire, he's going to take the highest job.
I mean most of most young miningpeople that take the highest
paying job they can get. Yeah, sometimes what you need to
(37:25):
run, yeah. Yeah.
And so you end up with people running mines who we have half
the experience that should be. And then these sort of things
happen or they have a great control problem and the mine has
to close down because they never, they never did the, they
never did their homework properly.
Oh. Yeah, yeah.
(37:47):
So it's not surprising. So it's not surprising that this
sort of thing could happen even with a large company like
Ivanhoe. You would hope that you guys
would attract the best. But you know, it's this.
Mine is in the DRC. It's not that easy to work
there. You know, I've got friends
who've worked out being there. It's not.
(38:07):
There's better places in the world you can work.
And so they have to pay very well and they may not get the
right people there. I don't know if they can.
I know I've turned down a coupleof Congolese jobs.
I went to the Congo earlier thisyear.
I didn't make it to to cooler Ocamo, but but yeah, that was a
(38:28):
an absolutely transcendental experience flying into
Lumumbashi airport, I tell you that much.
I mean, I do love, don't get me wrong.
I love parts of the DRC, you know, but Lumumbashi area and
the copper belt area, I don't. I don't love.
Yeah. Unbelievable.
(38:51):
Neil, this has been an absolute privilege to, to get your
insights. And you know, I'm, I'm certainly
very grateful. I'm sure our audience will be
extremely grateful that you've been generous enough to, to
share your, you know, your, your, your views, reading
between the lines and tying it all in with your decades of real
mining experience. Extremely valuable.
If anyone's interested in in finding Neil is prolific on
(39:12):
Twitter, I'll put a link in the in the shower notes.
But thank you so much, Neil. This has been, this has been
absolutely. Travis was good talking to you
and hope to talk to you again sometime.
Mate, how good was that insight?Unreal.
Unreal. Yeah, Neil is just like an
absolute wealth of technical knowledge.
Very generous to share, share his insights with us, I think.
(39:34):
And it was interesting, right. One thing we didn't even cover
with him, but I've been thinkingabout mate, it's.
Just like. You know, there's been this like
real flurry of, of unexpected disruptions in mining operations
lately, especially in Africa as well.
Not just Kokola, but like in thelast few months I've noticed
obviously Alfman's biasing mine when that got suspended because
(39:54):
the rebels got close. Cyrus Bulama, I got suspended
when farmers protested of all things, Sibanya's Cloof mine,
waste failure in the shaft. I'm pretty sure all those things
were within the last couple of months alone.
It's pretty brutal for the mining companies out there, so I
think there's a sort of lesson to expect the unexpected if
you're in the mining business. That is a good saying.
(40:17):
I think we should put that one on the wall, mate.
I like that. Yeah, it's it's interesting,
right? You think about it because the
best preparation you can have tobe ready for the unexpected is
actually just making sure that your insurance policies are
appropriate for your mines bespoke risks. 100% mate, mining
companies cannot afford to have insurance policies that are not
(40:40):
up to scratch. I just don't think it's
conducive to a good night, good night's sleep if you're a minor
right and the worst thing about it is it hits you when you can
least afford to be hit. That's.
Why you got to call CRE insurance JD they have the. 2.
Gurus. The gurus.
In mining and construction insurance for underground for
open pit or infrastructure projects, gurus, get yourself
(41:04):
covered for all possibilities. The unexpected things is what
you've got to be worried about, mate.
Gets even better mate. They don't do cookie cutter
solutions. Tailored.
We're talking tailored solutions, right for your
company, right for your situation, right for your mind,
right for all the risks you are going to face, the ones you know
about, the ones you don't know about.
And we're talking dealing with experts.
(41:25):
Quick and easy claims mate. I think every, every mining
disruption, it's you didn't expect it.
If you expected it probably would have happened.
You know, that's like everyone thinks that their policies have
sufficient coverage and then something comes up and it was
like, oh, damn it, if only I hadbespoke insurance brokers that
properly understand the bespoke mining risk of the jurisdiction
and operation that I have and can ensure my policies are
(41:46):
adequate and can price things appropriately.
Oh, wait, they exist, mate. It's called CRE insurance.
Oh, by the way, mining contractors, mining service
providers gets even better because because they understand
mining, it means that they will get you better policies at a
better price. Thanks for the support CRE.
Go CRE right now to the conversation with Koala.
Have you got any thoughts? Not a mining engineer, so hard
(42:11):
to want to be guarded in my comments because it's not my
area of expertise. I know the I've no people to be
exceptional and straightforward operators.
I think that they wouldn't have had a site visit that I
understand they cancelled or anything if they thought that
(42:32):
the initial seismic was going tocontinue.
And I think this is one of thesejust very unfortunate
situations. And you know what?
I will use Alpha man when Goma felt M23 or when the mindset is
an example. The market hates a void of
information and uncertainty. You have a spike of uncertainty
(42:53):
if you take the complete bullishcase, it's ah, there's so much
copper there. One or two quarters doesn't
change the NAV on a 40 year minelife.
I do think there's levers to pull given the Kapushi ramp that
should generate some cash. We'll look forward in two to
three years. And even if a portion of Kakula
(43:14):
is sterilized, there's enough levers to pull there that you
can push more Kamoa, maybe push more Kakula West, develop one or
the other. Like I mean, there's like 6
different proposed mines just inthe Kamola joint venture area.
You can go pull in, it'll be lower grade or, but you can keep
(43:36):
those mills full. It might take a little while in
a worst case scenario to get those mills filled again.
But I mean, look, it's, it's notgreat, but it feels like one of
these classic, the stock could be down 20 to 3040% initially
and we wake up in 12 months and it's recovered 60 to 70% of that
(43:58):
damage as we just get more clarity and disclosure and
understanding what it is. I mean, another good example is
when Glencore DOJ happened, stocks down 10%.
It was down 5-6 billion in market cap from memory in July
2018. And then when we finally get the
settlement like five years later, it's it's not even $2
(44:20):
billion. And it's like, why'd we freak
out? It's like, because the market
just hates a void. So I'm looking at Ivanhoe very
carefully. You don't get chances to buy
world class opportunities on sale.
Even if it's got a little bit ofa scratch on it now potentially,
(44:41):
it's still a world class district opportunity and team.
How good was that from both, both both Neil and the Koala and
a full episode with the koala with everything except for that
little quip is going to be out either Saturday or Sunday this
weekend. So stay tuned for that one.
JD, we've got some partners to thank.
We do thank you to the awesome partners at Mineral Mining
(45:03):
Services, MMS, Grounded, SandvikGround Support, CRE Insurance, K
Drill, KCA Side Services, Cross Boundary Energy and Black
Diamond. Service.
If you don't like it, you can always become a recruiter it
sounds like. That's that's easy.
(45:25):
Yeah, well, you know, you know, that's a very valid point.
All right mate, I wasn't sure. If you were calling to just let
me know or like I was actually recording what I was like, oh
shit, what I realised. Yeah, well, I was thinking.
In my head it would be funny as if if I put on some voice and
just pretend I'm some rando and my friend told me to call you to
get like a job and I'm just asking a bunch of dumb ass
questions. But then when you answered.
(45:46):
Oh hey, Travis, you threw me offand I was like, there goes my
whole stick.
JD, I'm not sure if you've been paying attention right, but
there's a bit going on with Kokola.
So some, some brew pillars are burst effectively and the extent
and severity of this situation is, is still kind of yet to
fully play out. The both Ivanhoe and Zejin have
put out some commentary to the effect to describe what's
happening. And it's early days.
(00:21):
So we still don't kind of know everything, but the, the share
price has fallen that 20% already.
I'm talking about about Ivanhoe in in this case.
And as everyone's kind of tryingto piece things together, I
thought it would be just absolutely awesome if we got the
insight of Neil Ringdial, who, who is a mining engineer who is
so like pointed and thoughtful and great at explaining like
(00:45):
what he is interpreting based onthe press releases.
I caught up with Neil this morning just on a, on a, on a
call and I asked him some questions, mostly because he put
out a couple of tweets, which I,I just found so insightful as he
as he spoke about what, you know, his interpretations of the
events are, how serious they might be and what the
implications could be for for Ivanhoe A. 100% mate.
(01:07):
It's the biggest copper mine in Africa.
It's one of the biggest copper mines in the world.
It's been a glowing success story for a number of years now.
Obviously owned by Ivanhoe as well as the Jin and the
Congolese government. And like you said, the the news
has sort of rocked the stock market.
So we tacked on a little bit of a conversation with the Koala at
the end as well to get a more ofa, a market's kind of
(01:29):
perspective on this and how he kind of interprets the event.
But I'm super excited to share the the technical conversation
with Neil as he sort of understands it, his experience
in underground operations. Very excited to bring bring
Neil's voice to the potty. Let us know guys if you you want
more from from Neil in the future.
I I really enjoyed speaking withhim and but first mate it's
(01:52):
Friday, which means it's called KCA Friday.
Normally I like to surprise Adamon Fridays, but today he's told
me to call Kca's recruitment manager, Christian Dean.
Hello. Trav.
What? You saved my number, Adam.
Switched me up. What would it take for a guy
(02:13):
like me who has zero undergroundmining expertise to to?
Become an underground miner. They got a manual.
License, Yeah, yeah, that's goodstart yeah for.
Sure. Like we're, we're all about
helping our clients. So it's what they want if they
need actually little people and they want to come to us.
(02:35):
But in all honesty, like coming from those experienced people,
people with the skills that they're looking for, people that
are a bit tired of find. So we generally have to go
kicking, excuse the pun. We're all this pretty much ex
operators. It's people they trust, people
that have done it so we can relate to the people we're
(02:55):
speaking with, obviously know some of those nuances that might
be required and understand what they actually need in both the
candidate and and the client. We know what it's like to be on
site. If they're not coming down the
hall, if you don't have the people, well that's not working.
So when they call that you really need someone and I need
them yesterday. So having that sort of mindset
(03:15):
as opposed to just like just recruiting, you know, so it
happens. I think that helps.
Just called KCII. Like to talk about things that
I'm interested in and I've always been interested in having
her. I should think before, you know,
this is negative news, but I must just say I'm very impressed
with the ability of that companyto execute on building new mines
(03:41):
and power plants. And you know, they're very,
very, very good at that. You know, they're done projects,
they've met, you know, projects have been on time and they've
had the glitches and but they'vebeen like worked through them.
And I guess this is another one,but I'm also a shareholder.
I like to talk about, I like to talk about stuff I invest in.
(04:06):
And I know what it's like to be on both sides of the story
enough. I've worked for public companies
before in executive positions. And, you know, there's that
famous phrase that goes, you know, if there's a bad press
release in for a mining company,then the news must be very bad,
very bad indeed because they always have to try and present
(04:28):
the bad news in the best possible light because of the
obvious impact. It's material, material
information. So it's always quite difficult
to decipher these things. And I felt I just wanted to, you
know, share my own thoughts on what I thought was really going
on behind the scenes and what might be the case, what might be
happening there. Yeah, I think that it's been
(04:51):
super useful because originally it appeared like, you know, the
the owners of this operations that Gin and Ivanhoe disagreed
on. Maybe.
Maybe it was semantics. Or.
Or the sensitivity as it relatedto what was actually happening
here. But there there was a
geotechnical event of some sort,but the the severity of it kind
of took a little bit little while to understand.
(05:14):
You. Were pretty astute, like early
on when there was that initial understanding that there could
be a bit more to the story. Yeah, I mean, my ears picked up
when the first press release came out that there were some
problems. And then then I got very
concerned when the second press release came out and there was
(05:35):
some objection to the Zigen press release from Ivanhoe.
So the two major shareholders had a disagreement.
And I think it wasn't really anything, as I said in my first
tweet, I didn't think it was anything malicious.
I just think that maybe there was a little bit less
understanding or maybe there wassome concern about the the
possible misunderstanding of theaudience what was in the
(05:57):
decision press release. But essentially both press
releases were saying the same thing.
The one said that there was spalling and falls of hanging
wool. And the other one said that
there was some seismicity and, you know, pillar bursts, OK.
And when you have pillar pillarsbursting, you get spalling of
the pillars. That's what it's called.
(06:18):
When you know the size of the pillars flake off, that's called
spalling. And you'll get bits material
falling off the hanging wall as well.
And it's obviously very hazardous.
If anybody's in that area, thesethings happen, you know,
seismics, the site, it's mining induced seismicity.
In other words, the seismicity wasn't there.
That's very lucky, in my opinion.
It wasn't, it wasn't, you know, that part of the Congo is not
(06:41):
very seismically active as far as I'm aware.
And so it has to be mining or induced.
And and that's, that's quite normal for many operations.
You know, even in ALMA here in Honduras, we have, we also get,
we also get pillar bursts from time to time, but we don't have
the same kind of very widespreadboard and pillar layout that
they've got at, at Kakula. And in the shallow mining
(07:06):
environment, like at Kakula, you've, you've got a, you know,
when you see, when you hear about seismicity in a, in a
shadow mining environment and multiple, you know, multiple
events or multiple, you know, you know, bursting of pillars,
that's, that's very big cause for concern in any mine.
OK, It's OK if you have one now and again, but if you have
(07:28):
multiple to the extent that yourmain accesses, you know, you
have to, you have to get people out of there and that, you know,
you have to start looking at alternatives to replace your
pumping system because your pumpcolumns have broken because of
the because of the police bursting, you know, that
suggests that there's something more serious, OK.
(07:49):
Can you help me understand that the difference between, yeah,
like experiencing this in a datemine versus a shallow mine and
why? Why the extra level of concern?
Well, with deeper mining you getmore elastic behavior to the
rock because of the depths and you also have a stronger
horizontal stress component normally as well as a strong
(08:12):
obviously a very strong, much stronger vertical stress
component. With a deeper mine, you've got
all this weighted rock above you.
You also get horizontal stress, increase horizontal stress.
And with ultra deep mines, like,you know, the deep platinum
mines and gold mine in South Africa and in do some of the
deep mines in North America thatI'm aware of, you know, you,
(08:35):
you, you get the, the rock actually behaves more
plastically. And so your support regimes are
different, OK, to what you need.You know, they're more of a
yielding support. And you have to, you have to do
a mine layout that's, you know, that suits, suits whatever
environment you're in. But the shallow mining
environment, you're dealing morewith dead weight.
(08:57):
OK, so we're talking anything less than some people might
think is deep, but it's 1000 meters or less is from where
where I grew up was considered shallow.
And so that's, that's the environment we're talking about
a cooler, cooler. I don't know what the depth is
now, but it's probably less than500 meters at this stage.
(09:18):
I know that all body goes down to about 1000 meters, but they
haven't got that deep yet. And so it's fairly shallow.
And so when you do a mining layer, and it's also a flat ore
body. So when you're mining a flat ore
body, you're obviously going to leave pillars to support the,
the beam, the weights of everything above you.
Those pillars have to be designed for the entire rock
(09:39):
mess above the pillar. And but that's, you know,
overhanging between the excavations between each pillar.
OK. And, and then how those pillars
will fail will depend on the size and the amount of stress on
them. And so if you make them smaller
or if you start with a big pillar and you might not, you
(10:00):
know, or we make them too small,depending on the rock
characteristics themselves, it will they will fail the other
flail plastically or you know, they'll burst.
OK. And you know, when a pillar
bursts, I think it's important to understand that it can still
have a yield resistance after bursting.
(10:22):
It just means that the solid part of the rock in the middle
of the pillars definitely cracked.
OK, And you have broken rock on the sides that Spall out OK, But
as long as you keep that intact,it's still got some support
resistance left. OK, Things can happen where you
have if you have a very hard orebody, for example, and maybe the
(10:44):
foot wall or the floor is very soft, you can have what will
happen there is the pillow will stay will will punch into the
football and and it'll it'll seem as if the floor is coming
up, but really the pillow is punching into the football.
OK. That's a different type of
failing mechanism. You can also have the reverse if
you have a soft hanging wall andyou have a hard ore body that
(11:06):
you're mining and can punch intoyour hanging wall and that's
going to be that's going to alsobe pretty bad.
In this case, from what I've read from the technical reports,
the foot wall is very hard and in the all body itself is quite
soft and in the material on top of it is also quite soft.
So they have to do a lot of shotcreting and you know, a lot
(11:27):
of support, a lot of shot creating is just basically
putting the concrete skin on theinside of your tunnel.
And then you know, you know, your usual, your whatever
support, your local support regime they've got in form of of
of bolts or anchors. And then you've got your pillars
which are holding up the mass ofeverything above it.
(11:49):
And so I don't know what what isbursting.
We don't have enough informationavailable to us to know exactly
what's happening. It could be the concrete skins
on the shotcrete that's bursting, but I don't think so.
I think what probably the pillars are solid rock pillars.
And even though the rock is verypoor, the whole body is very
(12:10):
poor. It's it's, it's, you know, it
crunches and when it crunches, it makes a burst and it gives,
it gives, you know, it releases energy rapidly in that as that
happens. And then what's worrying to me
though, and that can happen fine.
You know, sometimes you'll have a small pillar that's kind of
taking a bit more load than thanthan than the others around it.
(12:35):
Maybe there's bigger spans between that pillar and others
and it'll fail. It'll fail like that.
It'll be a big thump underground.
You'll hear it and it'll give you a scare and that pillar will
Spall and if you're nearby you'll be OK.
As long as you're not standing next to it, you'd probably be
OK. But when you have multiple
pillars failing, that suggests that they are losing.
(12:58):
So that beam that pillar fails is a little bit of movement.
Now that hanging wool beam has to be supported by the remaining
pillars, which are still stiff, but they also start failing.
Keep putting extra. Extra like a runaway train.
OK, so you'll get a whole area that starts to fail and that's
what's concerning. OK, if it was just one or two
(13:22):
pillars, it would be OK, but it seems to be widespread.
Otherwise, why would they have to evacuate the whole mine?
OK. And so that's very concerning.
And so it's not really the failure mode, which is what was
the the objection of of the Ivanhoe guys were, you know,
objecting to what surgeon miningwas saying in my opinion, and
(13:44):
this is just my opinion, OK. You know the I think I think
it's I think it's something moreserious.
I'm more concerned about the number of pillars that have
failed. And it'd be great if we got some
clarity from the company on thatand I'm sure we'll get that.
But you know, they have, they have to be very careful how
they, how they, you know, how they, how they explain this, you
(14:06):
know, to avoid liabilities. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a risk
that was date detailed in, in their technical reports 2020
like initially in 20/20/19. And is that a risk that's there
just because of the, the mining method itself or is it to do
(14:27):
with the, you know, the, the ground conditions as well, a
kind of combination of all thosefactors?
Is, I mean, I don't, you know, at this stage it's too early for
us to comment on whether it was a bad mining method or obviously
there was something that that was planned that never went
according to plan that resulted in this.
(14:48):
So I mean, I'm actually looking at the technical report right
now here and it says, you know, in the 2023 it talks about, you
know, major structures, namely the waste fault structures that
still contain soft infilling. And this coupled with tight
filling during drift and full mining operations, it is
unlikely seismic activity will occur on these structures.
(15:09):
It's it could be the fault structures that are moving.
OK, but the fact that they've talked about pillars bursting
and spalling, I think it is a pillars.
OK. Then they'd say in the next
sentence of this technical report.
The bracket pillars that will beleft along the large structures
will also assist in containing seismic activity.
(15:29):
So if you have a fault going through an ore body and you're
mining along the other side, youput a pillow on either side of
the fault. You don't actually mine on
against the fault or through thefault except for your excesses.
And you leave a pillar. Those are called bracket
pillars. And that's to prevent because
you'll have a different stress regime in this block, which is
defined by the by the fault on the one side.
(15:50):
It'll have different stress and this block will have different
stress depending on the load. And so you can get movements on
a fault and they can correct that can be seismic, OK.
And that's what that's what happens in the deep mine very
often, OK. And I think that's what they
were concerned about here, OK, But it's not a deep mine.
Nevertheless, it's a consideration that was taken
(16:13):
into account by the geotech guys, OK.
And an induced localized goes onto say, hey, the induced
localized seismic response associated with strain bursting
and or pillow bursting, which isthe same thing may occur.
This will be contained a result of tight filling and correct
sequencing during cut and saw mining operations.
(16:34):
The seismicity in this case mustbe related to the pillars
failing. OK.
And then probably because they were too small or the mining
spans were too large for that rock mass rating before that
particular rock time. OK.
And and you know in the previoustechnical report that said there
(16:56):
was not enough information. They need to do more work on it.
I'm sure the team, they have been doing work on it, but they
made a decision based on recommendations by subject
matter experts to do a particular mining method and
then they went and mined it. And now what's happened is they
found that the regional low bearing capacity of this pillar
seems to be aggression. OK.
(17:18):
And that's the question that they are probably looking into
right now. Is it that bad that they have to
go and redevelop a whole, you know, new mine adjacent to the
existing mine? Or is it is it going to be
something that is, you know, maybe they can manage, maybe
(17:40):
it's just, you know, a localizedarea in this in a one in, you
know, in a in one section of themine.
They can still continue to mine.And then they have to ask
yourself the question, what mining method were they using?
And it was a drift and full mining method with backfill is a
brand new backfill plant on site, fully commissioned, very
state-of-the-art. But there could have been a
(18:02):
management decision there. And that's what I seduced it as
well. There might have been a
management decision to delay thebackfilling and just mine the
primary drifts and then not not come back and backfill them,
just mine the primary drifts andkeep going because it's such a
huge ore body. You could probably get away with
that as long as you don't go back and rob any pillars.
Maybe maybe that's what maybe that's what the issue is.
(18:24):
Maybe they, you know, maybe theyshould have backfilled this, OK.
And or maybe there was secondaryextraction going ahead of time.
People were taking a bit of a chance.
It could be an operating thing. OK, The geotech consultants will
be quick to jump on that. If that is the case, I'm sure,
OK. And I'm sure the truth will come
(18:47):
out in the wash, but it could have just been a case that the
pillar designs were, you know, it's normally multiple factors
as well that causes something like this.
Like any incident in the mine, there's not one factor that
normally results in an incident or or injury or a fatality.
There's normally multiple factors.
Just like, you know, when you look at an aircraft
(19:08):
investigation, I'm sure you've know about the Swiss cheese
municipal where you have these walls of safety and they but
each have the each have, they'renot, they're not fail safe and
they've got holes in them. And so if the holes line up
perfectly, then that's what happens.
So you've got to think like that.
Yeah, so. The, the, the way around this,
(19:33):
would it, would it have likely have just been to well, OK, so
maybe it was maybe, maybe if it was the lack of back filling,
back filling might have maybe mitigated it.
But could there also have been an issue with the pillar sizes
themselves being too too small? Yeah, of course, could be.
Yeah. I looked at the mining plan in
(19:56):
my tweets and I tweeted a picture of it.
You know, you could see what they did in 2019.
And then here's a photograph of the mine.
What's being mined? In 2000 and not a photograph,
but as built part of the mine and you can have a look, you can
see, you can see the drifts thatthey've mined and they mine out
very quite a large area. It looks like about 500 meters
(20:18):
more in span over maybe a kilometer or two.
It's I mean they've been mining at quite a right there.
And so that's a big area that's mined.
And it's like, you know, coal mines developed like that too,
which is a very flat ore body. So it's very similar to coal
mining, underground coal mining.And when you do board and pillar
(20:40):
mining and coal mining, you know, you've also got to bear in
mind that your pillars have to be designed for for the full
load over the full span. And if one area fails, the
weight be the load in that area that's failed can transfer them
to the adjacent area. And I think that's what's
happened here. And unfortunately, it looks like
(21:00):
it's gone a bit close to the development into the, you know,
the main, the main axis development it might have, that
might have gone and affected themain access declines.
And I only only come to that conclusion because the pump
pumping system was damaged and they're looking at replacing,
you know, getting a new pumps and new and new lines to to keep
(21:24):
the mind dry. And I would imagine those lines
will probably be in the main access decline if you would
think that would be in a more protected area.
So. So that is a concern, yeah.
When you, when you highlight those two photos, 1 from 2019,
yeah, the other one from 2023, what are you comparing there and
(21:46):
and sort of seeing that's different?
You can see the block that they said room and pillar mining
area. OK, I look at that room and
pillar mining area there in scale and I can see the green
declines going down there. And I switch over to the next
picture, you know as built in June 2022 and I can see that
room and pillar mining area. They've done some room and
(22:08):
pillar mining there and then there's lots of fingers going
along there. If you look very small, they're
all Gray fingers. And those are the developments
and in between all the pillars, OK.
And I'm not sure which of the pillars have failed and which
have not, but I have to imagine that all of those pillars have
gone and they've moved over towards the North Port or access
(22:30):
area, which is looks like the mining gets quite close there,
OK, to that E service perimeter,E perimeter service drift that
they've got planned there, OK. And I don't know if you can show
the audience. Yeah.
But that area there between the North Port and the east
perimeter service drift is what I think is where I imagine the
(22:52):
pump column might be. That service drift is a decline
going down, probably downed up by the looks of it.
And and we've got to see, you know, that axis will be cut off.
The part of the analysis you, you, you know, you've put out
there that grab grabs me and clearly the the share market as
(23:13):
as well was kind of your, your thumb sucking implications that
there might be for both both my life and and operating costs.
How, how did you, how'd you comeup with with those numbers?
Good question. It's I guess it's a it's what I
(23:36):
think could be the implication. I mean, if you look at the again
at the map, I imagine that N portal ramps pretty good down to
the bottom of the straight section there.
But maybe you have to redevelop all the way around to get to
access, you know, you have to develop all around, right around
(23:58):
that caved area. And the worst case scenario,
it's quite a lot of development.There's no scale on this
particular plan, but those are big ends.
Those are 6 by 6m ends, twin ends.
They're, you know, forming the east service perimeter drifts.
There's two of them running downthere.
So you can get an idea. It's a couple 100 meters, few
(24:19):
100 meters, maybe 1000 meters ofdevelopment that you'd need to
reconnect to that existing design for the east perimeter
service drift. And then you have to go back
into the ore body and develop into the ore new new access
drifts. So I don't think it's that
unreasonable to say it could be anything from 6 to 18 months if
(24:41):
you have to redevelop the mind if that whole area is unsafe to
go back into. But as I said, those pillars
might be good enough. You know, if the size MIDI
settles down and the whole thingsettles down, you may still be
able to go back into the area. That's where the pillars are
burst and you may still be able to use some of that
infrastructure again, you know, and do it safely.
(25:02):
And then just brack, you know, and then the impact will be a
lot lower. We'll, I'm sure everybody's
doing their sums and their design work and the inspections
and that and and working out what to do.
And we need to give the company some time to to come up with a
plan how to how to, you know, how to re establish this again,
(25:24):
if we look at the resource and reserve, most likely we're going
to have a decrease in the reserve because you have to you
know, in your reserve caps, you leave pillars outside, outside a
reserve reserve is what you can actually put in the mill.
So any pillars that you leave behind, stability pillars you
leave behind will have to come out of the reserve, out of the
(25:46):
reserve. And obviously if this has
failed, we need to be more conservative with our design.
So one would naturally cook 2. The pillars have to be bigger.
OK, it's possible they won't. I mean, if they can work out a
way to backfill and do, you know, complete extraction, that
(26:06):
would be great. But that would be another whole
new mining method altogether. And I don't know what the
geotechnical implications of that would be.
OK, but but but I suppose that'sa possibility.
I think more realistically they'll probably end up going
with bigger pillars and that would mean, you know, how much
(26:28):
bigger pillars do you need? I don't know the answer to that.
But you know, even if the pillars are 10% bigger, you're
probably looking at about a probably looking at about a 30%
reduction in reserves. Yeah, OK, maybe maybe less, but
probably something like that looking at this layout be.
Substantial, OK. But it's substantial.
(26:49):
But it's not. It's not really.
An. Enormous resource.
It's such a magnificent resource.
OK, so that it's just going to take longer to longer to mine
and it'll take them much longer to ramp up to the planned the
planned numbers that they've, you know they've got in their
the phases of phase four phase. I can't remember which phase
(27:13):
they're on now, but in the next phase of expansion, OK.
So it'll just be a slower ramp up and they also obviously doing
homework as I mentioned, I thinkthey'll they'll they'll be
looking at increasing productionfrom Kamoa and maybe they can
fast track the IT seems that Kakula W is not that badly
affected. If you look at the map, it also
(27:34):
seems like you know that South portal ramp is a little bit
further away from most of the minings to date.
So not as much bypass development may be required
there to go and re establish something to the West and maybe
they can get into that a bit faster.
Gotcha. So.
So we've got to wait and see what they say there.
(27:55):
Gotcha. The twin D the twin twin portals
in this case, you would you would you would assume you know
helps the continuity of of operations as opposed to having
like a an elongated period whereyou can't actually mine right,
correct, correct. Yeah.
You know, and I guess, you know,you look at all the plan
development there, it's quite hard to see, you know, with
(28:19):
this, you know, simplified diagrams for this would be much
better to see more detail. And I think there is more detail
available there. I haven't looked.
Ivan has been very good at presenting detail on their
expansion plans as they go with,you know, presentations and
videos. And I've been, you know, been
looking at these for months and months and years and years.
(28:40):
Every quarter that I think everymonth they put out a new photo
album of each of their projects.And it's very interesting to see
what they do. There's a lot of very good info
that I get from from those photoreports and, and, and what their
display is really impressive stuff.
And with this team that they've got, they'll, they'll do the
(29:01):
best that they can do. It's unfortunate markets don't
really give credit to teams, youknow, for success really.
They've quicker to give this credit to discredit the team
when they have something like this.
And I've mentioned that in one of my comments to some of the
questions that got to these tweets is, you know, it's it's
(29:23):
very easy for us to say, yeah, it could be management and it
could be management, right? But these guys have done a
really good job, really good jobof it.
So we should give them the opportunity to see what they can
do to come back. Market doesn't care about that,
though. Market's going to sell on the
news, right? Market's forward-looking, yeah,
You know, unfortunately. Done.
It's baked in, it's baked in now.
(29:45):
So you know, so now everybody wants to know well what how bad
is the impact? And it's hard to say with the
information we got and we're really just grasping at strolls
here. But but I try to give it a go
and, and I decided that for now,I'm backing out.
So I sold my stock. And but that doesn't mean I
think the company's going to do badly.
(30:07):
I just think it's, you know, a wise thing to do.
And, you know, I'm sure they'll come up with a plan to resolve
this and, and, you know, they'llget back into it again.
And this is mining it mining hasthese problems.
Projects, they all, you know, wealways say project get delayed,
projects will be late and they will overrun on costs.
You're always guaranteed that tohappen on every project.
(30:30):
This one kind of that's happening maybe a little bit
later in the cycle. We're really in operation, which
is not good, but there's so muchexpansion going on within,
within this, you know, mining complex here.
It's something that I'm sure that they'll be able to deal
with in the medium term. Yeah, yeah, it's we're always
(30:54):
forward-looking for sure. But I don't think any other
company could have could have done what what has been done in
this part of the world to actually bring this operation
online in the 1st place and. The market needs to be patient
because if they, you know, and Iand I guess that's the danger.
That's what happened with the pressure users.
You know, I know what it's like with these things.
Yeah. You know, when you're on the
(31:15):
side of this, something like this happening, you, you almost
go through a phase of denial, OK, And then acceptance, you
know, and anger, you know, all the phases you get when you've
got a terminal disease or something, you know, it's a
similar type of thing. And you have to be capable.
I mean, if you're an executive, you know, responsible for an
(31:36):
operation like this, you can't just go out there and put up.
You got to make sure you have all the facts and you've got to
have it signed off. Then you got to hear what the
experts say and you got to hear what your people say.
And then you've got to make sometough decisions and you've got
to think about how you're going to formulate this to the market.
You've got to try and do it in the best possible light, of
course, because you want to havea minimal impact to your
(31:58):
business, I mean, to your share price really, You know, if we
were honest about it and, and you know, if you think about the
concept of a company, mining company or any company, I have
this rather naive, well told us naive way of thinking about it.
(32:19):
You know the old ways you buy, you buy a company stock because
you believe in the future, your future, you know, and the value
of that stock is should be directly proportional to the
future value of the dividends. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't worry. I still think that way too.
But not not everything. Not everything's valued on DCF
these days in mining. But you've got all these people
who have to short the stock on news.
(32:39):
OK, That makes things really, really difficult, Pop.
Shops. So, you know, it's kind of crazy
that the companies, the share price dropped as much as it has
because you know, there's other mines that this company has
control of. And you know, while this is a
big part of it, it's, it's not 20%.
(33:00):
Right. Yeah.
The the, the, the one part of everything that that couldn't
help but notice, Neil, any commentary was and it relates to
press releases, but Turner's lawof mining press releases.
Now, I actually haven't heard ofthis before.
I'm, you know, I'd love to, I'd love to just just hear you tell
(33:20):
me about that and that relates. There's a there's a newsletter
writer by the name of Mark Turner.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And he's he's the one who's always said that, you know, if,
if a mining company has to put out, given the mining company
has to put out. Boyd News always has to always
present news in the best possible light, you know, So if
(33:42):
it's bad news that comes out, itmust be very bad.
OK. Indeed, All right.
And I guess it's tongue in cheek, but it's true.
You know, unfortunately, you know, we've seen that before
with, you know, with many companies, you know, that have
to release bad news. You know, there's that
(34:06):
Australian, my Capricorn. Yeah, well, 29 medals can be
gone, Copper. Right, 31 medals.
Yeah, OK, It just got worse somewhere such.
A great yeah, I mean, there's a perfect example yeah.
OK, it's sometimes that happens and you know it's mining.
We mining, we say, you know, shit happens, you got to deal
(34:29):
with it so. So that's what happens here and.
And they got to deal with it andthey'll get through it.
And hopefully the whole management team responsible for
this don't get fired. Hopefully they, you know, they,
they carry on going. And if they do get fired, it's
because they haven't done the right job.
They haven't done, haven't made the right decision.
(34:51):
They've made a bad decision. Yeah, OK.
But I imagine, imagine they'll survive it given the great
performance to date. It's in a difficult jurisdiction
as well. And that's part of the problem.
These sort of things, unfortunately are going to
happen more and more going forward because there's less and
less good mining people out there who can, who are able to
(35:14):
run mines and mining companies. You get, you get accountants and
apologies to the accountants whoare CE OS and, and business
development guys and, and bank, you know, bankers who are CE OS
mining CE OS, but they, they don't really know much about
mining and, and, and it's easy to cut costs, but, but is that
(35:37):
really the right thing for the mine?
And, you know, you can get into the whole quagmire stuff.
But I think that's the biggest problem is we've got, and the
mining engineers we've got aren't really that good.
The few good ones that are out there are taken.
And you know, everybody who comes out of university wants to
become a manager tomorrow and noone really wants to do the dog
(35:59):
work, you know, and be a drill operator and A and A and a shift
supervisor for five years. And and you know, they want to
get promoted. And because there's no one in
the business doing mining, no one wants to go into mining and
the kids want to go into mining.There's there's less skills out
there. And so people get promoted
really fast, too fast. And they don't have the
(36:20):
experience and certain experience, you know, even
amongst the miners you get guys who you make, you make, you
know, bad decisions because theyjust don't have the experience.
They haven't had enough time learning from the old timers how
to how to mine and what to look for when you look in a mine when
you go and visit a mine. If I was, if I, if I didn't
already decide to be a finance guy in Yale, I'd be listening to
(36:42):
you right now. And I'd, I'd, you know, I'd
just, I'd, I'd study mining engineering.
And I know because. There's a skill.
Shortage. I'm going to get paid so well in
the future. Right.
But the thing, but I mean the number of of guys, you know, I
take a lot of respect for the old time and minor guys who
didn't go through and didn't geta degree in mining.
(37:04):
And they they are sidelined, youknow, because other guys have
degrees, but they're the ones with the real experience.
They're the ones who teach the people with degrees something.
But it takes time to do that. And if the young guys are high
fire, he's going to take the highest job.
I mean most of most young miningpeople that take the highest
paying job they can get. Yeah, sometimes what you need to
(37:25):
run, yeah. Yeah.
And so you end up with people running mines who we have half
the experience that should be. And then these sort of things
happen or they have a great control problem and the mine has
to close down because they never, they never did the, they
never did their homework properly.
Oh. Yeah, yeah.
(37:47):
So it's not surprising. So it's not surprising that this
sort of thing could happen even with a large company like
Ivanhoe. You would hope that you guys
would attract the best. But you know, it's this.
Mine is in the DRC. It's not that easy to work
there. You know, I've got friends
who've worked out being there. It's not.
(38:07):
There's better places in the world you can work.
And so they have to pay very well and they may not get the
right people there. I don't know if they can.
I know I've turned down a coupleof Congolese jobs.
I went to the Congo earlier thisyear.
I didn't make it to to cooler Ocamo, but but yeah, that was a
(38:28):
an absolutely transcendental experience flying into
Lumumbashi airport, I tell you that much.
I mean, I do love, don't get me wrong.
I love parts of the DRC, you know, but Lumumbashi area and
the copper belt area, I don't. I don't love.
Yeah. Unbelievable.
(38:51):
Neil, this has been an absolute privilege to, to get your
insights. And you know, I'm, I'm certainly
very grateful. I'm sure our audience will be
extremely grateful that you've been generous enough to, to
share your, you know, your, your, your views, reading
between the lines and tying it all in with your decades of real
mining experience. Extremely valuable.
If anyone's interested in in finding Neil is prolific on
(39:12):
Twitter, I'll put a link in the in the shower notes.
But thank you so much, Neil. This has been, this has been
absolutely. Travis was good talking to you
and hope to talk to you again sometime.
Mate, how good was that insight?Unreal.
Unreal. Yeah, Neil is just like an
absolute wealth of technical knowledge.
Very generous to share, share his insights with us, I think.
(39:34):
And it was interesting, right. One thing we didn't even cover
with him, but I've been thinkingabout mate, it's.
Just like. You know, there's been this like
real flurry of, of unexpected disruptions in mining operations
lately, especially in Africa as well.
Not just Kokola, but like in thelast few months I've noticed
obviously Alfman's biasing mine when that got suspended because
(39:54):
the rebels got close. Cyrus Bulama, I got suspended
when farmers protested of all things, Sibanya's Cloof mine,
waste failure in the shaft. I'm pretty sure all those things
were within the last couple of months alone.
It's pretty brutal for the mining companies out there, so I
think there's a sort of lesson to expect the unexpected if
you're in the mining business. That is a good saying.
(40:17):
I think we should put that one on the wall, mate.
I like that. Yeah, it's it's interesting,
right? You think about it because the
best preparation you can have tobe ready for the unexpected is
actually just making sure that your insurance policies are
appropriate for your mines bespoke risks. 100% mate, mining
companies cannot afford to have insurance policies that are not
(40:40):
up to scratch. I just don't think it's
conducive to a good night, good night's sleep if you're a minor
right and the worst thing about it is it hits you when you can
least afford to be hit. That's.
Why you got to call CRE insurance JD they have the. 2.
Gurus. The gurus.
In mining and construction insurance for underground for
open pit or infrastructure projects, gurus, get yourself
(41:04):
covered for all possibilities. The unexpected things is what
you've got to be worried about, mate.
Gets even better mate. They don't do cookie cutter
solutions. Tailored.
We're talking tailored solutions, right for your
company, right for your situation, right for your mind,
right for all the risks you are going to face, the ones you know
about, the ones you don't know about.
And we're talking dealing with experts.
(41:25):
Quick and easy claims mate. I think every, every mining
disruption, it's you didn't expect it.
If you expected it probably would have happened.
You know, that's like everyone thinks that their policies have
sufficient coverage and then something comes up and it was
like, oh, damn it, if only I hadbespoke insurance brokers that
properly understand the bespoke mining risk of the jurisdiction
and operation that I have and can ensure my policies are
(41:46):
adequate and can price things appropriately.
Oh, wait, they exist, mate. It's called CRE insurance.
Oh, by the way, mining contractors, mining service
providers gets even better because because they understand
mining, it means that they will get you better policies at a
better price. Thanks for the support CRE.
Go CRE right now to the conversation with Koala.
Have you got any thoughts? Not a mining engineer, so hard
(42:11):
to want to be guarded in my comments because it's not my
area of expertise. I know the I've no people to be
exceptional and straightforward operators.
I think that they wouldn't have had a site visit that I
understand they cancelled or anything if they thought that
(42:32):
the initial seismic was going tocontinue.
And I think this is one of thesejust very unfortunate
situations. And you know what?
I will use Alpha man when Goma felt M23 or when the mindset is
an example. The market hates a void of
information and uncertainty. You have a spike of uncertainty
(42:53):
if you take the complete bullishcase, it's ah, there's so much
copper there. One or two quarters doesn't
change the NAV on a 40 year minelife.
I do think there's levers to pull given the Kapushi ramp that
should generate some cash. We'll look forward in two to
three years. And even if a portion of Kakula
(43:14):
is sterilized, there's enough levers to pull there that you
can push more Kamoa, maybe push more Kakula West, develop one or
the other. Like I mean, there's like 6
different proposed mines just inthe Kamola joint venture area.
You can go pull in, it'll be lower grade or, but you can keep
(43:36):
those mills full. It might take a little while in
a worst case scenario to get those mills filled again.
But I mean, look, it's, it's notgreat, but it feels like one of
these classic, the stock could be down 20 to 3040% initially
and we wake up in 12 months and it's recovered 60 to 70% of that
(43:58):
damage as we just get more clarity and disclosure and
understanding what it is. I mean, another good example is
when Glencore DOJ happened, stocks down 10%.
It was down 5-6 billion in market cap from memory in July
2018. And then when we finally get the
settlement like five years later, it's it's not even $2
(44:20):
billion. And it's like, why'd we freak
out? It's like, because the market
just hates a void. So I'm looking at Ivanhoe very
carefully. You don't get chances to buy
world class opportunities on sale.
Even if it's got a little bit ofa scratch on it now potentially,
(44:41):
it's still a world class district opportunity and team.
How good was that from both, both both Neil and the Koala and
a full episode with the koala with everything except for that
little quip is going to be out either Saturday or Sunday this
weekend. So stay tuned for that one.
JD, we've got some partners to thank.
We do thank you to the awesome partners at Mineral Mining
(45:03):
Services, MMS, Grounded, SandvikGround Support, CRE Insurance, K
Drill, KCA Side Services, Cross Boundary Energy and Black
Diamond. Service.
If you don't like it, you can always become a recruiter it
sounds like. That's that's easy.
(45:25):
Yeah, well, you know, you know, that's a very valid point.
All right mate, I wasn't sure. If you were calling to just let
me know or like I was actually recording what I was like, oh
shit, what I realised. Yeah, well, I was thinking.
In my head it would be funny as if if I put on some voice and
just pretend I'm some rando and my friend told me to call you to
get like a job and I'm just asking a bunch of dumb ass
questions. But then when you answered.
(45:46):
Oh hey, Travis, you threw me offand I was like, there goes my
whole stick.
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