Mr. Minty: North American Palladium Limited is Canada's only significant primary producer of palladium in Canada. The mine has been operating at the Lac des Iles site, which is approximately 85 kilometers northwest of Thunder Bay, Ontario. The mine has been in operation since 1994 and until recently, up to about 1998, had experienced a difficult period due to poor management and adverse economic conditions. As a result, the company had not been profitable during this period. I came on board in January 1998 as the President and CEO and my responsibility was to turn around the company and make it profitable. Upon arrival at the mine site, I identified a possibility of implementing a strategy to improve the mine operations. I asked our technical team to look at the possibility of changing our operating strategy from a high-grade, low tonnage operation to a high-tonnage lower-grade operation. Upon further review, the technical team came back and reported that indeed this approach was feasible. However, to implement this approach additional exploration drilling would be required. Consequently, the company embarked on an aggressive two-year exploration program, which significantly increased the resources of the deposit from 1.3 million ounces to a reported 6.4 million ounces as of August 2000. The mining reserve had also increased and as of December 31, 1999 was approximately 4 million ounces. We are presently recalculating the resource and mining reserve of the deposit on the back of our 2000 exploration program. The latest resource and reserve estimates will be released in March/2001 and April/2001 respectively. My background ' I'm a Mining Engineer by profession. I have had considerable experience in both open-pit and underground operations, covering all aspects of project engineering, engineering management and mine operations. I have been involved in a number of mining operations within North America and abroad in Africa and I have extensive experience mining for precious metals, base metals and industrial minerals. As I mentioned earlier, North American Palladium is Canada's only primary producer of palladium. In 2000, we produced in excess of 95,000 ounces which will be reported to the public in due course once we have completed our financial audit at the mine site.
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