PNG offers ‘incredible’ chances

Business

By SHIRLEY MAULUDU
PAPUA New Guinea has provided K92 Mining Inc an “incredible” opportunity to advance as a company, with the mineral discovery in Eastern Highlands, according to company chief executive John Lewins.
Lewins said though the geography of the country was a challenge, the company saw so much opportunity as it advanced its operations in 2017. “The opportunities in PNG are way above challenges,” he said.
“We’ve got mountains, we’ve got high rainfall, and a lot of other things that we deal with, but the opportunity is incredible.
“We see ourselves very much a PNG company.
“What we’ve done at K92 is that we’ve put together a team of people and our geology and exploration people said previous interpretation isn’t quite right and we think that there are some opportunities here,” he said.
“The geologist said drill in that direction, 200 metres, and you’ll hit what we now call Kora North.
“At almost exactly 200 metres, we hit Kora, a beautiful discovery hole. That was drilled in May 2017.
“In October 2017, we took a sample from that area.
“This is underground. We are talking about 700m below the surface.
“In October took the sample, we put it through the plant – we had 90 per cent gold, 90 per cent copper recovery.
“We then had the marketing people who got us a market to sell it to in very good terms.
“We committed to developing Kora as a mine.
“At the end of January 2018, that is nine months after we drilled the first hole, and just four months after we took the sample, we declared commercial production.
“And that was the first time Kainantu mine had ever made a profit.
“And it has made a profit ever since then.
“Last year we gave K25 million in corporate tax to the Government.
“We’ve also grown our workforce from only 100 people from when we started to over 1,100 now.”

4 comments

  • Indeed that’s an incredible story! Great efforts by all the new visionary geology and exploration teams – an excellent team work and re-direction that turns the discovered negative results to positive results!

  • you did not ‘give’ K25 million as it was a legal requirement. To give something is an action that is willingly undertaken without any prior obligation or legal requirement. Of more pertinent disclosure was how much profit you made and or utilizing skilfull tax lawyers in order to forgo paying total taxes.

    • It didn’t fall from the sky…its hard work brother! There are many companies trying their best to evade tax (K92 is not one of them).

  • It only takes a considerate source to embark on such a high scale development initiative in a country. Well done to your achivements!

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