News about Anvil Mining Limited … Democratic Republic of Congo, Canada, Australia … December 2010

| People | Explore | Develop | Mine | Grow | Sustain

A t the end of November, Kin-severe Stage II was about

78% complete and forecast to be roughly four months from start of production.

More than 1,000 construction and management personnel are working towards completion of the construc-tion and commissioning work, and will continue through the Christmas period to ensure earliest practical production of first copper. The construction status at present is: ● Earthworks are almost fully

completed. The ponds are not yet fully completed but work is well advanced. ● Concrete works and brick/block

Kinsevere Stage II: 78% done – and steaming ahead safely

Kinsevere Stage II as it was in late November, 2010

Anvil’s senior project manager ALAN WALKER gives a state-of-play update from site

IN THIS EDITION … 2: Gardens surround the office 3: Dashboard keeps a finger on our productive pulse 4-6: Hearts open to Lubumbashi orphanages 7: Matched and hatched 8: Eddie K more than just the barman

The Anvil

A s the challenges of the last couple of years are put behind us and we move on towards com-

pleting Kinsevere Stage II, it is perhaps a fitting time to reintroduce our company newsletter, The Anvil.

This newsletter is for us; employees of Anvil. It is for recording what I like to call “every day great-ness”; those seemingly simple, little things that are being done all around the company during the ordi-nary course of the working day and working night, that often go unnoticed, but which are contributing to building Anvil into a substantial mining com-pany.

It is also for recording human interest stories of which there are many, every day.

I invite you to take a few moments from time to time, to pen off a few words and send them into the newsletter. You may be surprised how interested others will be in the stories you have to tell.

A message from CEO Bill Turner

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buildings are almost completed and are expected to be finished by the end of December. ● Structural works are mostly

completed. Handrails and flooring is being finished off, with painting teams busy across the site. ● Mechanical items are mostly

placed, with only a few repaired/rectified items to be supplied. An additional crane for the electro-winning area has been bought and is expected in March 2011 (before production of first copper). ● Piping work is progressing

well, but slower than initially planned. Particular attention is now being given to complete full sys-tems as needed for commissioning of utilities and services. ● Electrical work is progressing

in all areas of the plant, but particu-larly in the EW and services areas, as these contain the majority of cables and are required for the start of commissioning. ● The control room is a prefabri-

cated building and is only expected in December, but instrument instal-lation has started

The project is progressing smoothly with steady, solid pro-gress in all areas of the plant, and all disciplines. Several parties are involved in the Stage II effort, the major contractors being Ausenco, Group 5 Projects, Trepax, MCK, CCC and Aquatan. All of this would be to no avail without a skilled operations team ready to take over the plant. Recruitment of the full team has been accom-plished on time by the HR depart-ment: the operations team to run, maintain and support the Kinsevere operation is appointed, shift teams are being assembled and training in safety and operational procedures has started. A big effort has been taken in developing the training materials and in translation to French, for training of Congolese employees.

The training materials and meth-ods being employed are considered

to be best-in-class and should en-sure that the personnel are ready for active involvement during commis-sioning of the project.

The AMCK team of commission-ing specialists (from PPM Solu-tions) will mobilise from early De-cember and will assist with con-struction inspections, commission-ing preparations and testing to make the handover as smooth as possible.

All of the first fills and consum-ables required for the plant have been ordered; most of the minor items have been delivered already and the large bulk deliveries will start in January 2011 when it is safe to bring them into the plant.

Safety continues to be of highest concern. The construction safety record to date is excellent, with almost 1.9 million man-hours worked without a lost time injury and the two million LTI-free mile-stone is expected to be reached before Christmas.

The onset of the wet season has helped the establishment of flowerbeds which now surround the mining and admin offices

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It is all go on Stage II, with more than 1,000 people on extended shifts around the site

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Dashboard keeps finger on Anvil’s performance pulse W hen the global financial

crisis of 2008/9 struck, it had the effect of exposing compa-nies’ Achilles Heels as they battled to keep black ink in their books.

And while less fortunate mining companies went under during this calamitous period, Anvil had the advantage of having operational, cash-producing mines – along with the flagship Kinsevere Stage II in an advanced stage of development.

But while Anvil survived, it was pretty much touch-and-go as the company’s financial position be-came more precarious – and drastic measures were taken to keep the company alive.

The GFC, however, exposed the fact that the company’s financial controls were not as stringent as they might have been. And in sur-viving the GFC, it became critical to keep management’s finger more firmly on the pulse to staunch op-erational or corporate financial bleeding.

One such innovation to help keep tabs on costs and efficiencies was the introduction of a Dashboard at head office in Perth. Situated cen-trally for everyone to see at some-time or other during the working

day, the large-screen television presents a daily, blow-by-blow account of what is happening at Kinsevere, along with other indi-rectly relevant information, as well as a slideshow of images from site.

Behind the Dashboard’s develop-ment were group business analyst Troy Barclay and corporate busi-ness analyst Andi Wolf.

“We wanted to focus on the key performance indicators (KPIs), the key drivers in our business – whether that happened to be metres drilled or tonnes mined,” said Troy. “In the past, we would get a number of spreadsheets emailed around to a group of people within the com-pany which would contain a whole heap of stats and associated graphs. But right now we are simply focus-ing on the mining, crushing, HMS processing and sale of the product. From these figures, we can tell whether we are on target against budget – and whether we are going to cover our costs or not.”

So if there is a hypothetical lag of 10% in any particular stage of the process, plans can be made to drive the business to make up the short-fall. “It is all about better decision-making,” Troy added.

Andi said that the KPIs were used to limit the masses of numbers. “We have hundreds, if not thou-sands of numbers. But they don’t always give you a full picture so we try to reduce them to as few as pos-sible, following the value chain. There are leading indicators and lacking indicators … if you just report on profit, which is typical financial reporting, it is all in the past. But if we track what happened in the mine yesterday, we are able to ask the right questions straight away. If you follow traditional fi-nancial accounting, it is always looking back, reactive. When you have real-time information, you can make decisions with a much more proactive approach.”

There are six slides with informa-tion pertaining to site operations, share and copper price movements. A further 14 slides contain images of the fast-changing landscape at Kinsevere Stage II. The pictures are typically updated every fortnight, or when an important new piece of gear is installed.

The information for the Dashboard is imported from Excel spreadsheets into the company’s

Troy Barclay, left, and Andi Wolf with the Dashboard, which came online at Perth head office in April this year

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Employees open hearts, wallets I rene Mwenge’s private mission to help

a Catholic girls’ orphanage in Lubum-bashi has snowballed into a concerted drive by expatriate staff at Kinsevere and Perth to collect cash to buy food as often as possible for the children who live there.

Irene, personal assistant to Anvil’s op-erations vice president Paul Chare, has for some time visited the orphanage regularly with her young son, taking food and other basic items for distribution.

Through her interaction with staff and children at “Maison d’accuel Amani pour filles”, word got around at Kinsevere that this was a cause worthy of sympathetic attention.

So when Green Team project manager Joseph Daoud heard that a baby at the orphanage needed urgent medical atten-tion, he whipped out his wallet.

“Irene told me about this sick orphan. The baby was having difficulty breathing. Being an orphan – and sick – in Africa is not an enviable situation, so I provided some money for a visit to a doctor, medi-cine and some decent food.”

Joseph stresses that it was a very small amount of money. “Considering that sometimes we spend more than that hav-ing dinner and a drink.”

Needless to say, Joseph was delighted that he was able to help restore the child’s health. “I received pictures of the baby afterwards, and he looked healthy, which was a great pleasure to see. If there are future requirements for Ezekiel Saidi, I will be happy to help again.

“Ezekiel” is the name orphanage staff gave the lad shortly after his birth on May 24 this year. Irene explains that Ezekiel’s mother had health problems and was not conscious during the child’s birth. As a result, complications arose when the boy ingested liquids during birth, which later led to jaundice and fluid on the lungs.

The orphanage does not have the money to afford doctors’ consultation fees and medicines – and this is where donations from people like Joseph really count.

Irene took Joseph and chief executive Bill Turner to the orphanage during Sep-tember 2010 – and since then, several Anvil employees have visited the estab-lishment.

At much the same time in the Perth office, human resources administrator Michelle Kirkby had begun collecting second-hand clothes from staff, originally intended to be sent to villages near Kin-severe mine.

However, when she became aware of the basic needs of the young people living at the orphanage, it was decided to redi-rect some of the children’s clothing there. Generous donations were made by corpo-rate staffers … and the clothing piled up in Café Anvil.

Senior executives, including Paul Chare, took it upon themselves to lug the suit-cases and satchels stuffed with clothes back to the Congo. They ended up in Irene’s office at Kinsevere, who made sure the items of clothing got to the kids.

Irene was overwhelmed, and upon re-ceiving a large consignment from Perth, emailed this message to the corporate office: “I’d like to express my gratitude on behalf of the orphanage kids, thank you so much for all the clothes, caps and bags. Surely, there are very few blessed people who remember to be a blessing in some-body else life. Thanks for caring, putting a smile on the kids’ faces and for bringing them a gleam of hope for a better tomor-row. May the Lord bless you all including your families and touch each one of you at your point of need.”

Things then really started to take on greater proportions. At Kinsevere, health, safety, security and environment manager Gavin Schiller and mine operations super-intendent Colin Bald came up with an idea for a competition to collect money for the orphanage food fund. They invited site and corporate employees to place bets on which day the first rains would fall at site.

Gavin explains: “I’ve worked in Zambia and betting on the predicted day of the start of the rainy season is pretty common-place at mine sites. So I thought, let’s do it at Kinsevere and make it a charity event. I figured that if I got enough people in-volved the pool would be attractive – someone would win half the pool and the orphanage kids would win the other half.”

It certainly worked: A total of $325 was raised and the competition’s winner, Mi-chelle Kirkby, donated her winnings back to the fund. Then, between them, Gavin and training manager Danny Shaune gen-erously put in a further $225, bringing the total to $550. (Michelle correctly pre-dicted that the first rains would fall on October 15.)

Amazingly enough, this amount of money was sufficient to feed the girls at the Catholic orphanage, and the boys’ and girls’ Methodist orphanages – a total of 120 children – for two weeks.

With the cash in the back pocket, Gavin, Michelle, information management ad-ministrator Lauren Santos and assistant translator Sara Katanga set off with driver Jacob Kisimba to buy some essentials for each of the three institutions: two 25kg bags of maize meal, 50kg of rice, a box of frozen fish and 20 litres of cooking oil.

They then visited the three orphanages in late October to deliver the food, with

At the Catholic Girls’ Orphanage in Lubumbashi are, from left, Irene Mwenge, Ron Fisher, Jacky Numbi Kasongo, Joseph Daoud, Jan van Schaik and Alice Musasa Sambwe

Information management administrator Lauren Santos with orphanage children

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to Lubumbashi orphanages

both Michelle and Lauren finding the experience both confronting and moving. Gavin, an Aussie who has a fair bit of experience of Africa, was not unduly sur-prised at the rudimentary surroundings in which these children live. While both girls’ orphanages appeared to be fairly reasonably organised and clean, the same could not be said for the boys’ facility.

Gavin said the long, narrow building lacked decent airflow and natural sunlight. “The building is at the bottom of a hill near effluent – and it doesn’t smell very good. The interior is very damp and in-fested with mosquitos.” This hit a note with Gavin, who had recently recovered from a bout of malaria.

There are fewer boys in orphanages than there are girls in such institutions in Lubumbashi and the reason for this is fairly simple. The boys tend to be able to rough it out more easily as street kids, polishing shoes or doing odd jobs. It is more challenging for girls to defend them-selves, let alone survive, on the streets of the Congo’s second largest city.

Gavin and mates are determined to keep the food donation project alive. “We’ve agreed to take food to the kids every month. I’ve pitched a couple of ideas to Brendan (Moseley, metallurgy manager) on fund-raising ideas. Michelle (Kirkby) has undertaken to drive it from Perth, and kick their butts to raise some money,” said Gavin who added he was hoping to per-suade corporate Anvil to match contribu-tions raised by staffers.

Gavin said he felt the orphanage food assistance should remain low key. “When some of our national colleagues found out

what we’d done, they asked us why we’d not invited newspaper and television jour-nalists to report on it. But we don’t want it to be that. It is more about personal re-ward.”

During the course of the visits to the three orphanages, Gavin asked Sara to translate a single point to orphanage kids and staff: that the delivery of food was the result of a group fund-raising effort by Kinsevere employees. “We got that across to all the dorm managers and they were very appreciative,” said Gavin.

Sara echoed this. “These kids and their

minders are just amazed at how much the people from Anvil care about them. Sometimes the kids feel like they have been forgotten, that people do not know they exist and that no-one cares about them.”

This was Sara’s first outing to the or-phanages but she reprised her role as translator again in November when, after buying food with Irene, took a group of expatriates which included Tim “Ol’ Smoothie” Wilmott, Russell “Big Fella” Johnstone and Michael “Luciano Pava-

Gentle giant Gavin Schiller, above, with some of the lads at the Methodist Orphanage for boys in Lubumbashi. Pictured right is Michelle Kirkby with baby Ezekiel Saidi

Chief executive officer Bill Turner learns some of the finer points of hair-braiding from girls at the Catholic Orphanage

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T he first orphanage, reached after an hour’s drive into and

through Lubumbashi, comprises a walled compound containing three single-storeyed buildings linked by covered walkways. Upon arrival we were met by the smiling faces of most of the 46 girls who call this home.

We were given a thorough tour of the facilities by the maternal staff, each of whom bottle-fed an infant as they showed us around. I was impressed by the cleanliness and neatness of the simple furnishings.

Each neatly made bunk bed sported a grey blanket adorned with a large, colourful heart. Outside, newly-weaned puppies gambolled over food scraps while laundry dried in the sun.

Our provisions were offloaded in a matter of minutes and we all gath-ered together for some group pho-tos. Then I was handed a little bun-dle of joy and took my place in the photo with all the girls.

The second orphanage, for boys, is situated in the grounds of a large church and provides spartan accom-modation for the lads, some of whom were terribly slight.

Their humble accommodation was dark and gloomy but the boys showed their delight upon our arri-val and gave an eager hand to carry the heavy bags.

The sight of a juvenile carrying a bag of meal which might easily equal his own weight was touching.

We were shown through the ac-commodation accompanied by

strains of full-voiced harmonies from the church in which a lavish wedding was being celebrated.

Our final visit of the day was to another girls-only facility in a large converted house. There we were greeted by the happy squeals of a score of children of similar age to my very own and they quickly transformed into a bevy of beauties;

posing for our instamatics; demand-ing another and another and laugh-ing at the instant replay on the little screen. Four girls, aged from about three to six, sat upon a fallen tree and beckoned me over to take their photo. As I approached, an older sibling sprawled herself across their feet to get into the frame, and in so doing, all the little children toppled backwards off the tree, landing upside-down in a heap behind.

Forgetting the unsnapped shot I hurried over expecting to hear wail-ing from all quarters; but instead I observed the pained determination of the little people who have learned all too early to get up and get on with life no matter what.

As we travelled home that eve-ning we reflected on the experi-ence; the awkward inter-cultural greetings (do we embrace or shake hands?) the exuberantly happy greetings, our struggles with French and the orphans showing off their English.

We discussed the importance of making appropriate contributions to a needy cause. In a short afternoon visit we had met about 150 chil-dren. Perhaps we’d got more out of the day than the kids themselves?

In a large city such as Lubum-bashi where most people barely scratch a living there must be thou-sands of orphans and children in need of shelter, food and parenting.

We felt like we’d only just scratched the surface …

rotti” Paul to visit the children. This time, Irene and Sara had

$1,200 to spend buying food for the orphanages, which was collected through an initiative of Kinsevere expatriates.

Process training officer Rob Baron, who drove the fund-raising this time, takes up the story: “A couple of us thought we’d have some donation boxes made, and put them on the bar counter on Satur-day evenings, which is when every-one is there to feed their faces on barbequed meat.” Rob said that maintenance manager

Geoff Savage opened the boxes on November 13 after two Saturdays. “The seals on the carefully fabri-cated boxes were unceremoniously hacked apart, and they came up with $1,095. The box was re-issued to the public, and hey-presto, $5 more was donated to ring it up to a nice round total of $1,100. But there was more to come! A bolt out of the blue came the following morning in the form of another $100 donation, to bring it up to a rather nice-sounding $1,200.” Thanks to the increased amount of money raised, Irene and Sara were

able to extend the shopping list beyond staple foods and include some basic “luxuries” like baby formula, toothpaste and bath soap.

A final word from Michelle Kirkby in Perth: “A huge thank you to everyone for getting behind the fundraising, and your efforts in helping us to help the kids. The teamwork and willingness across the company to assist in enabling us to make the lives of these children a little brighter and bring smiles to their beautiful faces is greatly ap-preciated.”

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Scratching the surface

Process shift supervisor/trainer TIM WILMOT was one of a small group of Anvil employees who went on an outing to de-liver food to three orphanages in Lubumbashi (see main story on pages 4 and 5). Here Tim, pictured with baby Ezekiel Saidi, records some of his per-sonal impressions of the visits

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Operations vice president Paul Chare married Ai Hua in Melbourne on November 1

Matched and hatched THE pictures on this page reflect some of the mile-stone events in the lives of Anvil employees. If an event of importance occurs in your life – marriage, birth, an award or achievement – please email an image and details to barrya@anvilmining.com so that we can publish the item in a future edition of The Anvil newsletter.

If you have a story to tell, or have something inter-esting to share with others, call Barry on 6129.

Jamie Morton spent six months on contract in the Perth office assisting acting chief financial officer Lui Evangelista before the appointment of CFO Philippe Monier. Here Jamie is caught by mum Louise bathing daughter Sienna Justine, who arrived in the world on August 8. Jamie has since been appointed CFO for about-to-list mining company BrazIron Ltd.

Proud grandfathers in the Perth office are John Ryan, left, and Russell Boylan. John’s granddaughter, Samara Grace Duff, arrived on October 25 and Russell’s granddaughter, Ariana Lee Boylan, arrived on August 16

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business analytics, budgeting and forecasting tool, TM1. Andi ex-plains: “We store it in TM1 and then bring data into an appropriate form for reporting – and then dis-play it on the screen. The screen is driven by a laptop which is part of the network.”

Both Troy and Andi point out, however, that the Dashboard repre-sents more than an aid to decision-making by sharing information.

Troy said that many in the corpo-rate office had never been to site. “Now we can show them what it looks like, how we are tracking in different areas and it has the effect of pulling in everyone as part of the same team. Bill (chief executive Turner) can bring visitors into the office, investors, bankers, journal-ists whatever, and they can immedi-ately get a picture of what is going on at Kinsevere.”

Andi said budgets were previ-ously done in Perth, but that func-tion had now devolved to site. “In

mining, you cannot control your sales. Whatever you produce, you sell, so if you want to be better and improve, you have to bring your costs down. And before you bring costs down, you first have to bring them under control. I think we have arrived at the stage where we have a pretty good forecasting system. We compare the actuals with the forecasts and try to analyse what the reasons for variations are – and get everyone on board to share accountability. When we did the budgets from Perth and the num-bers came out differently at site, it was because site had limited input in the budgeting process. Now we try to get every head of department at site to enter departmental num-bers, so they are determining what costs will be – and then they can be measured every month, and the variances explained.”

This also helped close the psy-chological gap between “them” (in head office) and “us” (at site).

Both Troy and Andi stress that the Dashboard concept will perform

a greater role in future as Kinsevere Stage II is up and running.

“Looking ahead, we hope to eliminate the manual step (of data transfer). With the new SXEW coming on stream, we will be able to extract the information from the PLS system at site. Hopefully, we will be able to draw the numbers straight out of there and into TM1. That is our vision for this time next year.

“It will be real-time information. At the moment, it is quite labour-intensive as it takes Andi nearly an hour to get the information up on screen,” said Troy who, like Andi, is satisfied with the Dashboard’s benefits since its launch on April 16, 2010.

Bill Turner shares this view: “The Dashboard is a great concept that Troy and Andi have developed, which provides everyone with the essential information to keep ‘a finger on the pulse’ as far as opera-tions are concerned,” said Bill.

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The double life of barman Eddie K E ddie Kadiosha is the smiling

face behind the bar at Kin-severe’s camp at night but by day, you’ll find him hard at work at the University of Lubumbashi where he is in the final stages of completing a degree.

Eddie is in the final year of his qualification in the science of economics and management, dur-ing which he is studying public and monetary economics.

His is a five year degree, three for the qualification and then a further two to qualify for the appropriate licence.

“I am now in my final year, I am paying my own way through university and that’s why this is a good job for me.” Eddie is em-ployed by Star Business Interna-tional, which seconds its employ-ees to do contract work for Aden, the Kinsevere camp caterers. “I can work at night and do my studies during the day. Once I have finished my qualification, I will be able to get a good job.”

He says he has had lots of sup-port and interest from the guys working at Kinsevere. “I’d like to work for Anvil one day, it would

be good experience because it is a big company with new systems,” said Eddie who completes his course in July 2011.

Because his degree covers sev-eral disciplines in finance and management, he’d be able to work “wherever there are num-bers” – human resources, finance, accounting, logistics or admini-stration.

But, for the time being, he re-mains the cheerful barman at Kinsevere …

Eddie Kadiosha, student by day, Kinsevere barman by night