Mr. Meader: It used to stand for Gold Fields Mineral Services, but that no longer exists as a company; we are purely just the initials now.
TWST: Give me a quick history of GFMS.
Mr. Meader: We began as a department of Gold Fields of South Africa, the mining company, and this was back in 1968, producing the Gold Survey, an annual review of the supply and demand of that metal. And over the years, we've expanded into the other precious metals and base metals, and a while back we became a fully independent company. So we're now owned by the two main directors.
TWST: You just published a new report. How did you put that together and what are the report's findings?
Mr. Meader: Much of the information that goes into the figures that we produce comes from our travel program. We find that the quality and volume of information you get if you go out and visit people face to face, it's all greater than anything people can get over the Web or even by phone. And it certainly applies on the more obscure areas of the market, such as scrap or jewelry demand, or something. And the report that we've just put out, Update 1, gives an overview of our initial thoughts on the figures for 2009 and an outlook for the first half of this year.
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