News

December 11, 2008

With Chinese Backing, George Bujtor Gets Toledo Mining Into Position For A Long Haul Through Serious Weakness In Nickel

By Alastair Ford

It’s nice of George Bujtor to swing by Minesite’s new offices in the north end of the City. To be strictly accurate, he swings by to the bar below Minesite’s offices, which, company directors be advised, has tables big enough to cope with fair-sized claims maps and geological diagrams, and also serves a decent enough plate of chips to go along with your choice of beer or coffee. So, it’s not such a hard life in the run up to Christmas. Unless that is, you’re in the nickel business. And in that case, it’s no small statement to say as the metal yo-yos around the US$10,000 per tonne mark, that times aren’t quite as festive as they were this time last year. Indeed, the state of the nickel price elicited a string of choice and colourful expletives from the chairman of one of Aim’s better-known nickel companies during the latter part of the Mines & Money dinner not so long ago, and said chairman didn’t even start his string of expletives with the phrase, “this is off the record, by-the-way”. However, had the drink not been free all the way, and had the nickel markets not driven him to quite so much distraction, we feel he would have added all the necessary caveats himself, so we took them as read. No sense in kicking a sector when it’s down.

Still, for his part, George Bujtor is always ready with a smile. And that’s probably because in his case he has actually got more to smile about than most of his other nickel peers, many of whom are shutting down completely. George is fairly circumspect about the likely fate of Toledo’s own direct shipping operation, the ore from which is delivered to BHP Billiton’s refinery at Yabulu in Australia. However  he is quite interesting on the topic of Yabulu itself. “My guess is that their...