The 78th Sydney Mining Club Meeting

With HSBC, AMC Consultants, Ausenco, Grange Securities, Outokumpu, and The Swann Group

Thursday, October 2nd at 12.30pm

Presents:

A South African Story

DRD Australasia's Richard Johnson on

DRD Australia's Expanding Fortunes

It seems Durban Roodeport Deep has finally found the sunny side of the street in Australasia. Its early forays were into Hargraves Resources NL - where it lost the Browns Creek Mine in a flood 94% of the way through a takeover, and the first takeover attempt of Emperor Gold Mines - which was thwarted. But after a management shake up back in South Africa and the successful acquisition of Dome and its PNG Tolukuma gold mine, DRD's fortunes have changed.

After some early contracts with DRD, Richard Johnson was appointed Divisional Director for Australasia in January 2003. Since then he has coached Tolukuma into the black, and brought on the acquisition of the strong-earning 20% stake in Porgera in November 2003. By scooping up Robert Friedland's 14% stake in Emperor, he started DRD's fight to buy the whole company. Acceptances currently stand at 44%.

But for the entry of a mystery Dutch/Swiss bidder on the scene in the Emperor bid which complicates matters, Richard's vision to become a 400,000 ounce a year gold producer is looking good. International expansion is vital to DRD which remains reserve-rich in South Africa, but strangled by a strong Rand. Amazingly, for much of his extraordinary two-year journey, Richard has been living and working out of a suitcase - with his family still back in Zimbabwe. Only in January this year he hired his second full-time employee and got an office - so in many ways its been a power-of-one story. With the Emperor Gold Mines takeover still flapping on his deck, come and hear Richard's first-hand account of DRD's Australasian journey.

Don't miss it!