Corporate Profile
Overview
Gryphon Minerals had an outstanding 2011 and has made significant strides toward realising its strategy of being a near-term West African gold producer with further significant potential, through focussed and aggressive exploration programs.
At the beginning of the financial year, the global economic outlook was improving, although recovery remained brittle. As we close the year the fragility of the recovery has been exposed as markets struggle to cope with persistent sovereign debt worries in Europe and the US. Slow growth in OECD economies and concerns around the prospect of inflationary or deflationary pressures are also causing concern. With these factors as a backdrop, we continue to view the fundamentals of the long-term gold price as very bullish; for the first time in over two decades central banks have become net buyers of gold and as government backed securities fall from favour, gold, becomes the investment of choice as it remains largely immune to inflation/deflation, financial crisis and credit defaults.
Against this back-drop, Gryphon Minerals ended the financial year in a very strong financial position with more than $50.4 million in cash. These funds were raised via a $45.2 million, heavily oversubscribed, share placement and a subsequent share purchase plan which raised an additional $3.0 million. Market support for our company continued throughout the year with Gryphon admitted to the prestigious S&P/ASX 200 in the third quarter. Cash raised was used to fund ongoing drill programs at our wholly owned Banfora Gold Project in Burkina Faso and drilling programs on the Mauritanian properties acquired through our acquisition of Shield Mining Limited.
As part of the Shield transaction, Mr David Netherway joined the Board of Gryphon as a Non-executive Director. The appointment of Mr Netherway, who was previously the Managing Director of Shield, brings more than 35 years’ of West African mining experience to its company.
Conversion of a well-defined exploration strategy to resources has been the hallmark of Gryphon Minerals’ success at the Banfora Gold Project. Consistently, year on year, Gryphon has increased inferred resources by an average of over 400,000 ozs of gold per annum; with over 520,000 ozs of gold in inferred resources added in 2011 from the new Samavogo deposit, which was delineated within one year from initial discovery.
This disciplined approach to exploration has been applied to the development of drilling programs in Mauritania which includes the Tijirit Gold Project located in a highly prospective and underexplored gold district that hosts the world class Tasiast deposits. These high potential blocks were acquired in the acquisition of Shield Mining Limited, completed in 2010.
We continue to believe that corporate governance and executive remuneration practices are critical issues for the company and its Stakeholders. We support the need for simplified and transparent executive remuneration reporting, and these have been key influences on the structure of our remuneration report this year.
Our commitment to West Africa is underpinned not only by the geological fundamentals of the area but also by our strong belief that exploration and development projects provide a means to create opportunities for what has historically been a deeply impoverished area. These opportunities run a wide breadth from replacing dangerous artisanal mining activities with sustainable and safe mining practices to providing support for human rights and social/cultural development through economic empowerment in the region.
We continue to be, and remain committed, to not only building the Banfora Gold Project but more importantly building a significant West African focussed gold producing company.
