Board Of Directors
John William Gardner
Non-Executive Chairman
John William Gardner graduated with Bachelor of Engineering from the prestigious University of Melbourne in 1962. He has a Master of Business degree from Curtin University. He is a Fellow of The Institution of Engineers Australia.
Mr Gardner has a long and distinguished career in servicing the mining Industry in Australia as well as in West Africa. In Australia he has had involvement in Iron Ore, Nickel and Gold.
As a Director and General Manager of Minproc Engineers he was responsible for design and construction of gold and base metal plants. He established Minproc in Ghana where they became the leading Mining Project Engineers. He completed many project feasibility studies including geology, resources, mine plans and process plant. When he left the company they had built more than 60 gold treatment plants.
In Ghana he subsequently headed Ghana Manganese Company as Executive Chairman after negotiating the purchase from Government Divestiture Department. Privately owned, GMC grew from 300,000 tpa to 1.7 million tpa of Manganese carbonate shipments, when it was acquired for cash. One could liken the project to a multiple pit open cut gold project mining at 4 g/t.
Mr Gardner has been a director of Mincor Resources since its inception in 1995 and its ASX listing in 1996 with an IPO raising of A$8 million. Mincor today is an ASX top 200 Company with a market cap above A$600 million. It operates 6 underground nickel sulphide mines and with resources growing year on year. Last financial year it reported A$106 million PBATDA. Mincor has spun out a copper company Tethyan Copper with an ASX listing and IPO of A$3 million. Tethyan was in joint venture with BHP Billiton, and when it was taken over by Famogasta, a major copper producer in JV with Newmont, for more than A$150 million; it had a resource above 1 billion tonne of low grade near surface porphyry copper with 20 million ounces of low grade gold contained.
Mr Gardner’s association with Kenor goes back to 1993 when he consulted to the then unlisted company. He took an executive role in 1996, saw a number of expansions of the Lero heap leach project, and then a pivotal role in the development of the LEFA Corridor Project, including the detailed feasibility study, bank due diligence, the locating and purchase from RTZ of a large process plant of 8 million tonne of ore per annum, all the purchasing including the letting of the contracts to build the project. Guinor (Kenor) was taken over by Crew before completion of the LEFA Corridor gold mine.
Peter McMickan
Managing Director
Peter McMickan graduated with an Honors Degree in Geology from the University of Melbourne, Australia in 1977. He has post-graduate qualifications in Mineral Economics from Macquarie University and is a Member of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. His professional career has spanned 29 years worldwide with a number of major, well respected international exploration and mining companies including Newmont, Pancontinental Mining, BP Minerals, Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines and Homestake. He is a highly regarded geologist and manager, with a proven track record of business and technical success throughout his career.
His more recent experience covers corporate, senior management and technical supervision of mining, development and exploration projects throughout Australia, Africa and Europe. He managed the mine geology, exploration and successful resource development of Guinor Gold Corporation’s Lero Gold Project in Guinea, West Africa. During his four years with the company, the company’s exploration spend increased to US$1 million per month, which sustained the existing heap leach operation and resulted in expansion of the resource to over 4 million ounces of gold in the space of two years. This expanded resource base underpinned a major re-development of the Lero Project to a 6Mtpa CIP/CIL operation producing 350,000 ounces of gold per year.
Mr McMickan was also involved in Guinor’s re-domiciliation from Oslo to London, and listing the company on the Toronto Stock Exchange. He has, in the past six years been involved in the re-capitalization and market re-rating of three exploration and mining companies, in all cases more than doubling their market capitalization in less than two years.
Mr McMickan joins Viking from Aditya Birla Minerals Ltd, one of Australia’s largest copper producers, where he was General Manager of Geology and Business Development. During his period of employment he was responsible for worldwide evaluation of advanced copper projects, the ongoing development of the Esperanza South and Maroochydore copper projects and new exploration discoveries in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
Trygve Kroepelien
Non-Executive Director
Trygve Kroepelien is a graduate of Dartmouth College, N.H., USA (BA) and Tuck School of Business Administration, N.H, USA (MBA).
His professional career has been focused on administration of natural resources, initially within the UN organization, and subsequently with Norwegian consulting companies supplying services to the developing world.
Mr Kroepelien has a wealth of successful experience throughout West Africa, particularly in Guinea, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Mauritania. For the last 30 years he has been active in the private sector, promoting mineral resource projects in West Africa.
Mr Kroepelien was appointed CEO and Managing Director in 1986 of KENOR asa, a Norwegian emerging junior explorer. KENOR acquired the Dinguiraye exploration permits in Guinea (Conakry) initially with a 17.6% indirect participation. Under Mr Kroepelien’s management, KENOR listed as the first gold mine at the Oslo Exchange (OSX) in 1994, built a resource and a reserve to JORC standards and eventually inaugurated the first industrial gold mine in Guinea in 1996 (Société Minière de Dinguiraye – SMD).
In 1998, KENOR acquired 85% direct control of the company and eventually expanded it to a production of +100 000 oz in 2002. This again enabled the financing of USD 40 million from US sources in 2002 and 2003 to undertake an extensive exploration program significantly increasing the company’s certified resources.
Mr Kroepelien left KENOR December 2003 when it re-domiciled in London and listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. At that time the company had achieved a JORC certified resource of 4 million oz and was planning a production expansion to 350,000 oz/y and at the same time switching to CIP/CIL. During Mr Kroepelien’s tenure with KENOR the company grew from an initial capitalization of US$ 2 million to US$ 130 million.
Mr Kroepelien has continued to play an active role in the development of West African mineral resources remains today non-executive board member of SMD. He is also closely associated with the development of uranium deposits in Mauritania and Guinea as well as bauxite in Guinea.
Mark Newlands
Non-Executive Director
Mr. Newlands is based in the UK and has over 20 years experience in the investment banking and broking industries, most recently as Head of Equity Capital Markets in London at Enskilda Securities, the leading Scandinavian investment bank. During this time he executed numerous initial public offerings, as well as other capital raisings, rights issues and secondary share placings on behalf of European companies in a range of sectors. These transactions were marketed to a wide range of UK, Continental European and other international investors. Prior to Enskilda, he held senior positions at Nikko Securities, Europe and BZW (the then investment banking subsidiary of Barclays Bank PLC). He is currently a Director of privately owned merchant banking firm Emerald Partners.
Mr. Newlands holds a BA in Economics from Oxford University and an MBA from INSEAD, business school, Fontainebleau.