VAU - Vault Minerals

Starcraftmazter said:

Sad thing to happen, probably not the announcement you guys were hoping for.

Click to expand...

Puts everything into perspective when you hear news like that.

Condolences to the man's family and friends.

Yes it's a very sad announcement & puts all our views in a different perspective!

Putting aside the bad news on site today......

with the current pause on RED, it looks like a large number of people 'playing the range' is drying up and have already sold off, and those left behind are the ones that are in it for the impending announcement and hopefully good news. No-one really wanting to sell cheap, no-one really wanting to spend above this resistance zone until news comes.

a good old fashioned stand off!!

Out at $2.30

Agree with everyone, tragedy, especially for the person who fell and their family.

It is in my mind unacceptable that RED notify the market with a few lines and no follow up, and with a heading "Siana Gold Mine" hilarious, not "Death at Siana Gold Mine" or "Incident at Siana Gold Mine". Management wanted to mitigate the announcements effects ? They should have put "Gold production going to plan".
Surely they care more about someone's life than the stock price.

Couldn't have been worse - anyone who works in construction knows that the reality is that if the person is on your site you are responsible. To say "it's just misadventure" ie. their own fault (my interpretation) is crazy. If you have a big black hole with no barrier and someone falls down it because they didn't know it was there when they are digging gold out of the ground for you, is that right ? Not in my mind. Even if they knew it was there, were drunk and riding a push bike across your site, management are still responsible for protecting workers. I clearly am missing something here and I freely admit that I am not a miner so I have no idea what I am talking about. If this was an Australian mine, would it be different ?

Can't believe the stock held up today, my interpretation must be very wide of the mark, in which case I apologize for the rant, but my impressions of RED are being reviewed with every announcement. Not good.

mr jeff - i also concur - based on headline of ann. i was excited to open, hoping for an update.....quite a downer to come across it.

Yes, the wording seemed to indicate his not being where he should be, but as you say the company has a moral duty to ensure things safe as possible

regading the heading I thought they had a PR /comms outfit?

How a couple of other miners handled it
AVM 26/10/11 ann. heading "Fatality at..."
FMG 24/12/10 ann "Media Release .Incident at..."

however they seem to be following MMLs lead... 31/10/11 "Co-O Mine" heading when announcing in mine fatality.

My sympathy to his family, also.

The only thing I can think of is that they were preparing for other announcement and didn't change title. It's an odd one really, don't think it would have been deliberate.

Hi all. My condolences to the poor mans family also. Absolute tragedy.

My thoughts exactly Mr Jeff. It doesn't matter if he were a contractor, red 5 employee or a man off the street, it is still there mine and there responsibility. And my interpretation of (misadventure), was that it was somewhat his fault. Is rubbish. I won't even go into the heading. In Australia someone would be in court.

I actually work in a mine and if there is an near miss, incident or fatality there is always an I-cam investigation. Which will basically be investigated and find the exact cause of the problem and who is to blame.

We also have on rainy days or once a month sessions called toolbox talks or u days which are basically safety talks. And quite often serious incidents and most certainly fatalities from pits around the world are always shown in detailed emails. Just to let us know what could happen. I'm just wondering when and if well even here about this poor guy.

Very sad.

Hi All, and yes a sad day when there is a fatality. Please note that I make no representation here with regard to RED and its responsibilities and how it should act. But I do want to make a few points, and I can confirm I have not had any discussion with anyone re this specific accident.

I don't know what happened with regard to the tragedy, and whilst Moit you are correct in what you say about how the investigation would be carried out in Australia, who has said that this won't be investigated either by RED or the authorities?
I believe from my past discussions with GE onsite that RED places as first priority the safety of its employees and contractors, and if you recall RED has put out many commentaries in its annual reports plus in presentations, about how much emphasis RED has put on safety. I can imagine that GE in particular is very upset at present with this accident, and will be doing all possibly to investigate and rectify the vaguaries that led to the fatality.

But for those who haven't worked on minesites, you have to recognise that such environments by their nature are not like workshops with carefully controlled environment etc. These are big areas of open space and when things go wrong they can go terribly wrong. And these things DO happen in Australian mines as well, notwithstanding all the controls and safety measures put in place. You can't put people in cotton wool in such environments, and there are certain circumstances which could result in such tragic events occurring.

I understand that RED does carry out regular safety meetings onsite in the various departments so I don't think its appropriate to start using a blame approach, especially when we don't know what the actual circumstances were in this accident. I have no doubt that RED will be investigating it and will have responsibility to report the outcome of that investigation to the authorities and that investigation may well include the authorities as well.

What is disappointing, and it was referred to be some posters, that RED tried to conceal the fatality behind a bland headline of Siana gold mine. That IMO is the bad thing to come out of this from a management perspective.

Somebody died and all there is to pick on is the way the announcement on the ASX was titled? Jeez get a grip people. It most likely really was the furtherest thing from their mind!!

MrLister I'm disappointed if you thought my commentary tried to downplay the significance of the tragedy. I didn't have any intention to downplay that aspect whatsover. I was commenting on the other aspects of safety that should be considered by all, in any mining situation.

Wow, this preliminary commentary by GE of the ramp up phase for Siana has caught me by surprise. And don’t be conned by the apparent ho-hum view that the market has taken of the announcement. Whilst I am a positive spin poster on RED, this announcement has some very subtle but positive remarks embedded in it that should provide a lot of strength to the longer term positive outcome of gold production for Siana, IMO of course!

The comment “…Apart from a modest delay in the commissioning phase the project is remarkably similar in scope and outlook to the feasibility study….” is what I have been hoping for, as based on that feasibility study the project has NPV’s way above the current market cap of RED share price! That is very positive.

Additionally, the commentaries re the Siana drilling and resource estimates of that such as “…We have been recording significant intersections of gold mineralization in the latest round of drilling that are over 500 metres below surface and some of the deepest recorded to date. Whilst this mineralization is beyond the design of the open pit it gives us encouragement that the underground potential of the system is robust…”

and “…an increase in the Mineral Resource can be expected based on the recent deep drilling results and the definition of additional gold mineralised zones in the pit outside the current Resource…” both provide very definite proof that the current reserve of 10 years mine life plus the additions to resource already defined within the US$900 ore envelopes are likely to be increased significantly once the ramp up has increased to a level to provide economic parameters for reserve estimation within Siana – it could suggest the final ore reserves for Siana being considerably above 1 million ozs of gold! This could attract the bigger gold producers starting to put a ruler over RED for takeover based on Siana alone, especially if it becomes more evident that the Siana gold system to build to a few million ozs in total.

And again the comments re Mapawa indicate that another big season of exploration is about ready to commence in coming months.

Finally the overall capital cost confirmation that there has been no major blow-out with the rectification works on the front end transfer points. This is also very positive.
I take the announcement as being very positive for some much more bullish statements of gold production in coming months and forecast earnings to follow.

Love your optimism, but I didn't read it as such a great read. I read it as a fluff piece....all about nothing concrete, just maybe's. Unfortunately, I think the market agrees!! So does this mean we do or don't still get our end of month progress report?

Couldn't agree more - seemed like a real fluff piece conveniently submitted a day after some very sad news.

Don't pay too much notice to it and reevaluate things at, say, $2-$2.10

Can't say quite why but it has always been my reading "between the lines" that while Siana was viable, Mpawa, though not yet accurately drilled and mapped, had the potential to be the real sleeper, especially as the workings are already there and shall we say amortised across the life of Siana with Mpawa being all bonus...
No re-rating is all "straight up" but I have great hopes for Red over the next two years,.
Having said that, it would be nice if a shareholder-friendly balance between dividends and exploration expenditure was found. Gold reserves are a factor in sp but dividends are the great driver that cannot be ignored

One must give Red 5 marks for consistency. They rarely if ever meet a deadline. Greg Edwards signs his name over the statement that a report on Siana will be issued by "month's end" and it apparently is OK if it isn't . Not rain, not Filipino bureaucracy, just not convenient it seems .
I did not vote for the pay rise

Lol Fwpike, I like your last post, it helps stir the pot and yes its good to keep the managment accountable by affecting their pays, but seems they have got the ears of most of the insto's at present!

For those critics calling the latest announcement cynically as fluff, the production and profit guidance announcement is still to come, if you note that they are to give an update on Feb production as part of that announcement, its a bit hard to get it out ahead of Feb. I suggest as Fwpike mentions, you read between the lines otherwise you might not get the subtle hints that are very informative. But reading between the lines needs a greater degree of understanding of the games that are played by spin doctors!

I'm afraid I did not see any "update on February production" promised as such Beatle, I noted that we would receive "production guidance including estimated cash flows and cash costs at month's end" signed Greg Edwards
If by "month's end" he meant "early March then there is an easy way to express that. One uses the words "early March".
These guys have a very casual attitude to retail investors, (who of course are only getting what their relative apathy deserves.)

40 minutes into trading and its a ghost town.