22 www. bus- ex. com DECEMBER 09

Newmont Asia Pacific NOVEMBER 09 www. bus- ex. com 23 Because of the capital investment and certain risk involved in gold mining, does Netscher think it's more advantageous for a company to enter into joint venture partnerships or to operate a mine independently? " Gold mining is circumstance- driven and depends on the size of the company as well as the region in which one is operating," he says. " There has to be a good reason to enter into a partnership, since it brings complications. So it's simpler to operate without one. However, if you're operating outside of your home territory, in a more challenging region, it makes a lot of sense to work collaboratively with a partner, in a joint venture or other structured arrangement. For example, Newmont has partners in Peru and Indonesia, where they bring good local knowledge. For a really big investment, partnerships help spread the risk but also the reward." Since the best gold at Boddington has been mined in its early years, the remainder is a lower- grade ore, and the priority now is to move and process a large volume. The mine there is sizable enough to allow a large- scale operation, with the processing plant within conveying distance from the mine. " The mine has to be large in order to make the economics work," Netscher says. " The key to success is sufficient scale and world- class operating techniques, in terms of double- sided loading of trucks, efficiency in use of the amount of cyanide per ton of gold, and other measures," he says. " We have benchmark standards that we have to deliver to once Boddington is up and running. We're mining around one gram of gold per ton of ore, with large- scale equipment. At full production, we'll be moving 10 million tons of material per month. In a month, we will process about what we process at our Jundee and Tanami mines in one year, and at Waihi in "" When Boddington is up and running at full capacity, for a while we'll be producing nearly half the volume of Newmont's global gold output- approximately two and a half million ounces annually"