Paul Benson, M.Sc., BE, B.Sc., serves as SSR Mining Inc.’s President and Chief Executive Officer and a member of the board of directors. He has been employed at SSR Mining since August 2015 and brings to the company 30 years of experience in various technical and business capacities. Most recently, Mr. Benson was CEO and Managing Director of Troy Resources Limited. Prior to that, for 20 years he held a number of executive and operating roles in Australia and overseas with BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Renison Goldfields. In this exclusive interview with the Wall Street Transcript, Paul Benson reveals his current plan for increasing value.
The strategic focus is to continue to grow and develop several owned properties: “…We were a silver producer. Then, in 2014, we became a precious metals producer with the acquisition of the Marigold mine located in Nevada, and the year after that, we were producing with revenue evenly split between gold and silver. Last year, we acquired Claude Resources, and the aim there was to get ownership of the Seabee Gold Operation in Saskatchewan, Canada. This acquisition further increased our gold production. This year, approximately 80% of the revenue is from gold and 20% from silver. However, silver will pick up again in coming years as our mine in Argentina that we now refer to as Puna Operations starts to expand production from the new Chinchillas project. So silver production will increase, but we will still be predominantly producing gold.”
The current plan is to upgrade existing operations as well as develop new mines: “…we eventually have to do some equipment replacement, specifically replacing our hydraulic shovels. So at the moment, we have one large rope shovel, two midsize hydraulic shovels and a front-end loader. We are undertaking a major strategic study to see whether we can justify replacing the two hydraulics with a larger rope shovel. And that would increase the tons moved per year from 80 million to over 110 million tons per year, which would lower our cost, lower our cutoff grade and, therefore, bring more resources into reserves.”
To get the full interview with all the detailed estimates for future growth, visit the Wall Street Transcript.
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