Anatolia adds to Copler mine life

Although a scoping study on the sulphide portion ofAnatolia Minerals Development’s(ANO-T, ALIAF-O) Copler gold project, in Turkey, looks at starting to mine the deposit more than 10 years from now, the company says the study is significant now.

At this point, Anatolia plans to start production on the easier-tomine oxide ore at Copler by late 2009.

The oxide deposit, which contains 1.8 million oz. gold, will eventually be followed by the less developed sulphide deposit. Current estimates predict 2.3 million oz. gold could be mined over 12 years from the second deposit, extending the project’s life to 20 years.

Chief financial officer Douglas Tobler says having a second project already lined up will make thecompany look stronger in the eyes of investors.

He says that once companies get their first mine going, the inevitable question of “what next” needs to be answered.

“Everybody looks at them and says, Well, we could give you full valuation if you had your next project on the books,’ so what we’re hoping is that this gives the company that long-term window,” Tobler says.

This would allow the company to look for intermediate projects in the interim, either internally or by acquiring, he notes.

There’s more. Now that the sulphide deposit looks to be economic, the company just might speed things up.

“One of the things that we can begin looking at is what would we need to do to pull the production forward (five to six years),” Tobler says. “Ten years is far into the future, but (the study) is significant because it sets out milestones and gives us a very good path to follow.”

The capital costs for the sulphide mine development are projected at around US$161 million for processing facilities with an average cash cost of US$385 per oz.

If the company were to start mining the sulphide ore before the oxide ore has been depleted, Tobler says it would cost Anatolia an additional US$10-15 million.

“You would have to add a second mill and possibly some tankage,” Tobler says. “But we would also have 350,000 ounces of gold production for the second half of the oxide life.”

Based on the scoping study, Anatolia would be looking at an 8,000-tonne-per-day open-pit mining operation.

The life-of-mine strip ratio would be 1.7:1 with annual production averaging about 189,000 oz. gold.

The study did not put value on the 8.5 million oz. silver and 70 million lbs. copper that the deposit contains.

“We just haven’t got the studies far enough that we had a high enough confidence level to know,” Tobler says.

The company will do additional studies to see whether the copper and silver could be extracted economically.

Anatolia drilled about 33,000 metres at Copler over 2007 and expects a new resource calculation by the end of the first quarter of 2008.

The company won’t do much drilling at Copler this year, but expects to drill about 35,000 metres on its eight other projects in Turkey.

Construction for the Copler village relocation program, which will start in the spring, will see 45 families move before production starts.

Tobler says moving the village before construction wasn’t a requirement, but the company felt it would be safer because of the roaming sheep and goats kept by the villagers.

“You don’t want them hurting their sheep or walking or driving through an active mining operation because they could get run over by a truck,” Tobler says.

During construction, Anatolia will employ up to 450 people and during operations, the mine will need about 250 workers.

As Anatolia gets closer to production, the company has begun its search for a new leader.

After 12 years with the company, founding president and CEO Richard Moores said his experience was “interesting and intense,” but that it was time to move on.

He saw the opportunity that Turkey offered while on a world tour with his wife in the mid-1990s. The company went public in 1998.

“Within months, the whole junior sector shut down, the stocks sold off to seven or eight cents and you couldn’t raise money,” Tobler says.

“Dick and a couple other guys kept the thing going on their own — they used stock options to keep the Turkish employees in place — Ithink that’s where the bond formed –back in those hard days.”

It wasn’t until 2000 when Anatolia partnered withRio Tinto(RTPN, RIO-L), that the company was able to start spending money on the properties it had rounded up.

Tobler says Moores’ strategy of building a team of local people kept the company there over the long haul.

“Because they were all Turkish nationals, (Moores) was able to work through the system and understand it much easier than if you come in from the outside with no prior experience,” Tobler says. “He broke a lot of fresh ground and opened some doors.”

Dozens of junior resource companies have come to Turkey since then.

“We are kind of the gatekeeper, so many of them come to us to see if we’ve got anything we can joint venture — that’s why we’ve got five,” Tobler says.