INTERVIEW WITH LES EMERY, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF MARENGO MINING LIMITED (MGO)

“Marengo Achieves Successful TSX Listing”

http://www.brr.com.au/event/48836

THURSDAY, JULY 31, 2008, 3:15 PM.

            BRR    Good afternoon and welcome to Boardroom Radio. Today, we welcome back Les Emery, the Chief Executive Officer of Marengo Mining. Les, thanks for

10                    your time.

            MGO    You are welcome, Cameron.

            BRR    Les, let us start. You have just released your quarterly, your June quarter activities statement. Let us start with the listing on the Toronto Stock

15                    Exchange. What was the rationale behind that?

            MGO    The rationale was really to take Marengo beyond the borders of Australian terms of investment community. We are the only one with a major copper-molybdenum project in world-class proportions and that is obviously going to need a lot of financial flap behind it, both on the debt and equity side to get it

20                    up and running once the (inaudible) (0:00:39) is complete. I suppose when you look around the world, we are the most proactive market in supporting certainly base metal projects because ASX is really one of the pre-eminent markets in the world, so it is a question of, sort of, going elsewhere to expand our base. We are now tri-listed, of course. We are an ASX-listed company,

25                    we are listed on the PNG’s Port Moresby Stock Exchange and now we are listed on the TSX, so we are trying to cover all bases and appeal to a wider audience and investors.

            BRR    Les, just moving to your main project, Yandera in Papua New Guinea. You

30                    have completed phase 1 of your Definitive Feasibility Study. You are into phase 2, just wrapping up phase 1. How did you go with it and what was the outcome?

            MGO    Phase 1 was completed on time and on budget, towards the end of April and was reported in May. The idea of that was to take our original scoping study

35                    or conceptual mining study, look at the proposed development strategy for that, and work at whether that was, in fact, the best way to go forward. The original study was really just an exercise to see if this project had any chance of working at levels, certainly copper-molybdenum price is well below current pricing, and it showed that it did so that justified moving to DFS. So, what we

40                    have done there was really come back to a blank sheet of paper (inaudible) (0:02:08), make sure that we are going to do a study on the best development option. So, the first stage had a strategy which included moving the ore to the coast and processing on the coast and moving all by rail, etc., and it was decided as a result of phase 1 of the DFS that there is a better way to do it. A

45                    sort of a major change in strategy now is to put the plant and process the ore on site and move the concentrate off to the seaport of Madang and the tailings to the major Ramu Valley rather than trying to either store it on the hills or move it to the coast. A number of major changes which are all very positive for the project.

            BRR    Les, just speaking about that, what did that do for the capital cost of the project?

            MGO    Actually, what phase 2 does, that tells us what it will do in more detail. Phase

5                      1 did not seem (inaudible) (0:03:06) release of any costing or capex or opex. Really, it was just purely the operating strategy or philosophy. Now is phase 2 and that will be completed by June of next year. Just to go through and do the complete detailed design on each of those aspects and the costing of that including other aspects such as the procurement times and the actual

10                    equipment listings, so we know where are they going to come from, what do we need, who are they going to come from, how long do they take to construct, ship, etc. So, the real sort of crack of the DFS is phase2.

            BRR    In phase 2, you mentioned that you have got six drill rigs operational. I mean,

15                    obviously with six drill rigs ongoing, you are going to have a lot of results flying back. Is it not correct, Les?

            MGO    Sure. I mean, somebody asked me when do we stop drilling this project and I said probably in 50 years' time. I mean, now we have required bigger acreage. We have got 1500 square kilometres. I think, in rough numbers,

20                    about 0.2% of the land mass or the surface area has actually been drilled, and that is only in the Central Porphyry. There is not one diamond drill outside of that. We have got 100 kilometres of major structural feature which is mineralised along its length in quite a number of places, so we will always be drilling. But in terms of the DFS, most of the drilling for the DFS will be

25                    completed by December. There is some sterilisation drilling underway for plant sites and waste dump areas. That will continue on into next year. The moment some of the drillings we are doing is outside of the existing pit design, as much as a kilometre away, drilling nearby targets, they can very easily become part of our pit designs or additional pits. Beyond that, we have

30                    targets some 2, 3 or 4 kilometres away in different zones that will be subject to drilling, hopefully starting late this year as well and moving into next year. So next year's drilling predominantly will be very much more exploration drilling and trying to prove up some of these other porphyry targets because what has happened over the last 40 years of this project, drilling by

35                    Kennecott/BHP, others and ourselves, is that we have all concentrated on the Central Porphyry. None of us know if this is the best target. I mean, it is the most advanced and obviously any mining operation would be the first, but none of us know if any of these are the porphyry intrusives which are mineralised as we have discovered. In fact, they may be better. We may not

40                    have all been focusing on the best one first.

            BRR    Les, part of the listing process in Toronto, you had the opportunity to beef up the Board with more experience. Can you talk to us about the new additional board members, please?

45        MGO    The approach to the Board is to actually build a Board that shows what I refer to as a development board. We are now fully covered in that. We have added a truly international board. We have three Australians. Sir Rabbie Namaliu, former Prime Minister of PNG, is on the board and effectively a PNG representative. We have Susanne Sesselmann out of Germany who has got a long history in resource financing and banking. We have two directors, Elizabeth Martin and John Hick out of Canada, who sort of allow us and give us local content in Canada. They have both served on many boards of mining and exploration companies. We are very pleased with the make-up for the

5                      Board and the way it is structured. So we have come a long way from just being a junior ASX company.

            BRR    Les, with the listing of the stock in Toronto, how has the composition of your shareholder base changed?

10        MGO    Currently, we hold the Canadian Register Holds, something around 10% of our register. We would expect that to grow. I mean, the (inaudible) (0:07:13) Canada was very much institutional. It was not a retail listing so we did not acquire a large spread numerically of shareholders. There are not a lot of retail components and that we would seek as time goes on. We have started

15                    to get research out of Canada. Paradigm Capital has initiated research on us and we are hopeful that over the next few months, we will see at least another two brokers out of Toronto commence or initiate research on us. It is sort of chicken or egg. You need to be listed on the TSX before North American retail markets will look at you. Then once you are listed, you need

20                    to have some research. It sort of all follows and it is a longer-term plan and we did not expect instant success. We have achieved listing in probably one of the toughest markets for quite a while. We have gained some very supportive institutional investors in North America. We have got relationships with a number of brokers in Canada and it is all going according to plan.

25

            BRR    Les, it should be pointed, in this sort of market environment, that the cash balance is nearly $24 million. How long will that last you?

            MGO    That is a fairly positive thing in the current market when you are looking around at people and sort of their bank balances are dwindling. I mean, we

30                    have a fairly high burn rate, and on the current DFS budget, that will run us through until about this time next year and possibly a bit beyond as a bit of a safety margin in there, but we do have a lot of targets outside of the DFS area in the budget and it sort of depends on how much we can push those and how quickly we can push them because they all have an excellent opportunity

35                    to really sort of move us up to another level. It is safe. It is a nice safety margin to have at the moment for sure.

            BRR    Sure. Les, final question is how many staff do you have on the ground at the moment in Papua New Guinea.

40        MGO    We have about 35 or 40 full-time staff, of which all but two are PNG nationals. We have a team of around 11 geologists on site. Again, the majority of those are PNG national geologists. We have got a very pretty much local employment policy. Then we employ in day labour. All of our drill pads and access tracks and etc. are done by hand. We have day labourer which can

45                    range between 1 and 300 people on a daily basis. A significant employer.

            BRR    It is certainly a busy quarter and I do not imagine it is going to slow down for you this quarter, Les.

            MGO    No. You are absolutely right.

            BRR    Travel schedule must be fairly heavy?

            MGO    It is, but you have got to be doing all of this once. The problem we have when we write our quarterly is that it sort of runs through a lot pages because there

5                      is a lot of activity.

            BRR    Sure. Les, if our listeners would like to get some more information, what is your web site? If they do want to make contact with you or perhaps someone else in the management team, what is the best number they can reach you

10                    with?

            MGO    If they go to marengomining.com, there is a contact list there with e-mail contacts and phone numbers for myself and the management team.

            BRR    I should point out to Boardroom Radio listeners that they are welcome to ask

15                    their questions through the web cast facility which we will then send to Les to be answered at a later stage. Les, thanks for your time today.

            MGO    You are welcome, Cameron.

            BRR    Congratulations on the listing and we look forward to following your

20                    developments.

            MGO    Thanks very much.

            BRR    That has been Les Emery, the Chief Executive Officer of Marengo Mining speaking to us on Boardroom Radio.

INTERVIEW CONCLUDED

Contact brr@brr.com.au for more information

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