Calgary firm seizes golden opportunity in Colombia
With gold reaching new highs, resource investors are looking to the resource-rich and under-explored country of Colombia. But is the political risk too high?
Doug Firby - November 12, 2009
“Colombians are highly professional. They honour their agreements.”
Van Den Bussche says the local workforce is also well educated, which means many of the engineering and geological staff can be recruited and mentored locally. And, employing a local workforce helps ensure buy-in.
“All anybody wants in Colombia is to have better lives for their children than they had for themselves,” he says.
Antioquia has also worked hard to win that buy-in, keeping the local community up to date on developments and explaining their plans in detail. “You can’t go down a road for three years and not tell the community what you are doing,” says Van Den Bussche. Resistance has been minimal for three reasons: the project is small in scale, initial operations will be underground (rather than open pit), and it’s not in an area of undisturbed jungle. In fact, the total disturbance of the initial drilling program will be limited to about 10 hectares.
Importantly, Canadian mining companies are more accepted than local companies, says Van Den Bussche, because “we tend to be less invasive.”
As bright as the prospect is, Antioquia faces one major challenge: Getting known enough to win the confidence of investors. Last year’s market collapse has compounded the challenge, leaving Antioquia’s stock languishing at an undervalued share price that peaked at $0.25. The company hopes the A-list of Calgary founders will help – as Thibault says, the experience of the core team is what sets this company apart from other juniors. During the last spike in gold prices, he says, “we saw people creating junior companies who had no idea what was involved.”
In fact, the high-profile sins of others have created a large psychological hill for TSX-listed Antioquia (TSX-V: AGD) to overcome.
For about eight years after the Bre-X mining scandal of the late 1990s, junior gold companies in Calgary “died”, even after regulatory reforms were implemented. They’ve only been able to stage a comeback in the last two or three years, thanks largely to the spike in the price of gold.
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