News

January 07, 2009

Minera IRL Is Riding High After A Stellar Performance In 2008, And Is Now On The Hunt For Deals

By Alastair Ford

Far be it from Minesite to spread gratuitous compliments around the place, but when we ran into Courtney Chamberlain a little while ago, we felt compelled to mention that his company, Minera IRL, was recently referred to by a (nameless) competitor as “the darling of Aim”. This produced about as deep and as booming a laugh as you could stretch to imagining from Courtney, who isn’t exactly heavy set. And you could see he wasn’t entirely displeased with the epithet - even if such praise often morphs over time into something of a poisoned chalice, as expectations get raised and raised.

But in a way, 2008 was always going to be a good year for Minera IRL. The real eye-opener was how bad a year it was for everybody else. Thus, when Minera had well and truly put the teething troubles of the previous year behind it, had established production from the outcropping Corihuami project in Peru, and then, as the year progressed, began to exceed production and cost expectations by some margin, there were grounds for all concerned to sit back and look around with some satisfaction....