Aldershot Resources   

Interview with Jeremy Caddy, Chairman   

AR:   Jeremy, there aren't may companies like yours. Usually they concentrate in one area. How did you come to the idea of being geographically unlimited?

JC:   We were looking for, and we continue to look for, properties with considerable merit, uranium properties of considerable merit. For example, while we were in Zambia we went after a project that I was pretty confident I had in my hand. I visited Zambia and then went on to Namibia to talk to the people. They have a uranium mine in Namibia. They are owned by a Belgian chemical company, and to my surprise I found that they had picked up a claim in Zambia which contained the areas that were looked at by a company called Haddington previously, an Australian company. I targeted these little deposits and in negotiations with both the parent company in Belgium and with the mine manager, who is also the CEO of [Acaroosoo Mining Company], I was told that we would be given a joint venture, or at least an option to acquire a considerable part of the thing.

AR:   Put it in a little bit of perspective. What areas are you exploring in the world?

JC:   We are exploring in Canada, in Australia, and in Zambia.

AR:   May I ask you how do you find the expertise and the talent to be in so many areas?

JC:   We've put together for quite a while now a very experienced uranium geological team. Ian Ferris is our Vice President of Exploration. He has got probably sixteen years of experience working with Uranium in Australia and now with us. Ian is very thorough.

AR:   There are many other exploration companies. Is there a tremendous competition for exploration expertise?

JC:   Oh, of course there is.

AR:   So how do you attract them?

JC:   Because first of all we know who they are. We know who to go after.

AR:   You have the background for this personally?

JC:   Yes, of course.

AR:   How many years have you been in uranium?

JC:   Me personally? When I was a young engineer, I spent a month out at [Rung] Jungle for Consolidated Zinc as a stand-in mine manager. All I had to do was walk around with a Geiger counter and a can of paint and paint up the ground for the miners. But since then I haven't been involved in uranium mining. My skills come because of the people I know, and that's how I've put it together.

AR:   So in other words, you spent a lifetime in exploration, probably covering a large part of your working life.

JC:   In mining and exploration and building mining equipment, dredgers.

AR:   This is the expertise you brought into this company, to get the talent to go after Australia or Africa for new potential uranium deposits.

JC:   I guess the expertise I come with is that I have worked pretty well all over the world, and so I know what I'm looking for and I know who I'm looking for.

AR:   Uranium has had a tremendous run-up. Does it create a boom in exploration, a shortage of manpower, but a big reward for talent?

JC:   Yes. There is a big reward for talent. We have got a real intellectual property in the people that we have running our various programs, whether it be in Zambia or in Quebec or in British Columbia, or in the Northern Territories.

AR:   In all these three areas – Canada, Australia, and Africa – what is the most advanced stage you are with what deposits?

JC:   We're drilling right now at the George project up in Northern Territory, which has two former operating mines on it. So that's pretty advanced. We will be drilling by the end of this week at Western Australia, which was a resource previously drilled by Uranium in Australia before the price of uranium collapsed in 1982 or something. So those two are pretty advanced. The Zambian project is also quite advanced. It's in fact the Escarpment Group which carries the uranium values. So again, we know what we're looking for and it's relatively advanced. It's not absolutely grassroots.

JC:   The Torry Creek project, the project in Quebec, and the Nalia project in Northern Territories are more conceptual, I should say, rather than grassroots. We have an idea of what we think the model should be for what we're drilling or what we will be drilling, and or what we will be drilling, and we're setting about proving whether the model is correct or not.

AR:   If you had to make a guess, in the next three years how much money do you have to spend on running the business?

JC:   This year we're going to be pretty well spending all of the $5 million we raised in April and May. I would say that in three years we're going to be looking for more that $5 million a year.

AR:   If I am correct, you have something like 80,000,000 shares outstanding.

JC:   Fully diluted it's probably 90,000,000.

AR:   Ninety million at US$ 0.30 is $27 million. But you want to spend $15 million. Where do you get the money?

JC:   I'm quite confident that we've got the values there if we're really breaking away at projects that look like they're getting into feasibility study stage.

AR:   If a feasibility study is positive it is definitely going to help. But, in other words, running the financial side of your business, matching with exploration and trying to get partners for various projects, is almost like a full-time job.

JC:   It is a full-time job. I do nothing else.

AR:   So, if it's a full-time job for one individual because it's an art, how can you carry out a program financially, whereas your people are in the field with drilling rigs? That's basically the business. You have people in the field and then you have the brain work and the contacts to raise the capital or restructure the business or get partners, or project financing, any of these alternatives that you have to consider.

JC:   Right. That's correct. I think I know where you are going with this, Andrew. You're concerned that we're blowing out our capital.

AR:   No, no. I'm basically extremely bullish on commodities and so on, but what I'm saying is that there are 600 companies like yours—uranium explorers. And one or two will emerge as major winners. I accept that you have the experts and the luck may find uranium fo you. At the same time, there is a major job on the outside. That is to mastermind the company, the raising of the money to create an attractive stock, get the publicity for what you are doing. That's a very serious part of the business.

JC:   Yes, I can do nothing but agree with you.

AR:   And if you have ten other companies in Vancouver and they can do perhaps the drilling, they have the territory but they don't have the knowledge, contacts or respect of the financial and media world, they will not succeed, and companies like yours can buy up other companies.

JC:   That's also true, yes.

AR:   And, if you go to Africa where the great wisdom is that the Western world didn't do anything for decades, there may be unexpected huge opportunities. Africa is in a way a closed book to the West because we have neglected them.

JC:   Yes. I think there is some truth in that. I mean, as you and I have spoken before, people like Terry Roland really brought Zimbabwe to the front and quite a lot of people got mining companies going in Zimbabwe. That's all disappeared now with our friend, Mr. Mugabe. He can't live forever.

AR:   I have a tape of Sir Roy Walensky. I think it was 1976. And I still have the tape, and as I was doing the interview—it was long, about five hours—suddenly he said,

And now, of course, we are trying to pick up the pieces. But the advantage is whoever is there, the contacts, the expertise, I often talk to people in South Africa. In fact, today I have to talk to Anglo-American about Nucor and the Uranium Participation. Certificate company in London. The Africans are very happy to work with the West. They are delighted. So, in other words, there is an opportunity which doesn't exist on any other continent.

JC:   I think that's broadly true, yes.

AR:   This is what I wanted to bring up. There is a company, extended, good expertise, some money, very good prospects, has an eye on the treasury, and where can this company go? When you look at the history of almost any mining giants—Africa, Canada London—they all started with one or two projects, developed them, had big success, and they leveraged and became major companies. Those days there wasn't this enormous commodity run-up, so the potential cash flow was much lower than it is today. So, maybe I can tell you that in ten years' time we'll look back to this interview and we an say "present at the creation."