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Sunday, 16 January 2011
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A pint with: Alistair
Cowden
Friday, 14 January 2011
THREE decades on from his first job in
Company Search
Company Name
Australia, Scottish-born Alistair Cowden, the
managing director of copper company Altona
Company Description
Mining, now finds himself in the driving seat
as he steers the company towards production
when the Kylylahti mine in Finland comes
online in November. He recently took time
out of his busy schedule to speak with
journalist Tania Winter about his future plans
and time in the industry.
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TW: What does the future 12 months hold in
store for Altona and yourself?
Feature
AC: The big thing for us is that we are starting a
mine. In September 2004 I stood at the minesite at
Kylylahti doing due diligence and, by November this
year, I should be standing in the decline and seeing
first ore.
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TW: Can you walk me through your career to
date?
AC: I did degrees at London University in Edinburgh
and a PhD in geology on Kambalda nickel, which is
how I ended up in Australia in 1981. I spent six years
with WMC working in nickel and gold and was lucky
enough to be there when the first gold boom
happened. I finished my PhD whilst I was working
underground at WMC, which was pretty nutty. Those
were the glory days of WMC. I then became an
academic for Auckland University but only lasted nine
months. I then spent six years with Delta Gold
running exploration at Kanowna Belle and Sunrise
[both in Western Australia] and at the Hartley
platinum project in Zimbabwe. I did the first resource
estimate at Sunrise and then Delta sponsored my first
junior company and put money into Archaean Gold.
We made the Nimbus silver discovery just outside of
Kalgoorlie before the company was eventually taken
over. I then got involved with a number of juniors, the
most successful being Magnetic Minerals which made
the Dongara mineral sands discovery before it was
ultimately taken over by Ticor. I also founded Rox
Resources and was its chairman for three years
before subsequently selling out. I then founded
Vulcan, which was about seven years ago now, which
eventually joined forces with Universal Resources to
become Altona. But during my career I have worked
in Africa, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Finland
and the Ukraine.
TW: What have been some of the biggest
challenges and issues encountered?
AC: The first was the GFC. I was with Vulcan at the
time and we were at the point of breaking ground. We
had a term sheet from a London bank, everything was
barrelling along and we were spending a million
dollars a minute, and then the world ended. We found
ourselves with $A30 million in the bank and nowhere
to go. In the end we had to re-craft the company into
what it now is. It all worked out well but for that first
year after the GFC it was a pretty miserable time and
we had to lay people off. It wasn’t good and I won’t
forget it. The other challenge was in the early days of
Vulcan when we took an option over a project in the
Ukraine. We were the first group to take a modern
drill rig into Carpathian Mountains to drill this thing
up, which at the time looked like it was going to be
huge. But after drilling it turned out there was nothing
there. That was pretty shocking, but we still believe
to this day that some of the material was salted. The
market absolutely clobbered us and it hurt our
credibility.
Backgrounders
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ALTONA MINING LTD [URL]
TW: What have been some of the big lessons
learnt?
AC: I think the biggest thing is that this business is all
about resources and discovery and I have been very
lucky in that I have been involved in a number of
discoveries like Kanowna Belle, Sunrise and Nimbus.
There is a lot of arrogance in our industry about
discovery and so forth but the word discovery means
that before it happened, you didn’t know. To make
discoveries you need many things – passion, humility,
persistence, good science, money and a bit of luck. It
really is the human endeavour.
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TW: What sparked your interest in the industry?
AC: My dad was a painter and decorator and one day
he came home when I was about 11 or 12 and told
me about a lady who had a dinosaur footprint in a
house he had been working on that day. I was quite
excited and the next day the woman told dad I could
go to her house and have a look. She was an old
spinster and her hobby was collecting fossils after she
discovered this huge track of dinosaur footprints in
southern England. That developed my interest in
fossils and I then got involved in the Open University
program which was designed for retirees. So there
was me at the tender age of 14 or 15, with these 60
and 70 year olds, going off to Iceland to look at rocks.
TW: What have been some of the highlights
along the way?
AC: That period with Delta where I was simultaneously
doing Kanowna Belle, Sunrise and Hartley. Never
again in my life do I expect to have so much metal so
quickly. The other thing, which is more of the scientist
in me, was when I was working in Kambalda doing my
PhD. I had an integral part to play in developing the
current exploration model for nickel deposits in the
region based on channel facies, or lava channels as
they are referred to today.
TW: Any words of advice for new recruits?
AC: Start with a big company and then move into the
junior sector. Learn your craft first with the big guys
and then get rid of them and go and have fun.
TW: Interests outside of the industry?
AC: I spent quite a few years involved, at board level,
with the school my three daughters [Mhairi, Catriona
and Sheona] attend. When I get time, which is not
much at the moment, I am really into art and life
drawing.
TW: Where do you see yourself in 10 years
time?
AC: Hopefully still alive. I want more time. When I
was young I used to do rock and ice climbing so I
would love to go back and spend more time in the
wilds of the Scottish Highlands. While I might not be
able to do that sort of stuff anymore at the age of 52,
I would just be happy to be out in those sorts of wild
places again.
TW: What has been your most interesting travel
experience?
AC: The most amusing was many years ago when
Delta was conducting a grassroots diamond
exploration program in Zimbabwe. I went to visit the
sampling crew which was headed up by a guy called
Martin Spence. He had a camp on the banks of the
Limpopo River on the border of Botswana and
Zimbabwe. I had come from Heathrow and taken a
freezer bag of smoked salmon and a whole bunch of
wine and drove out to the camp. Martin’s bush camps
were like five star canvas hotels. He set up dinner in
the middle of the dry river bed of the Limpopo, which
luckily was in the middle of a drought at the time, and
we ended up arm wrestling, pissed as parrots, in the
middle of the river with a full moon behind us and
hyena’s barking. It was just amazing. What other
industry do you get to do stuff like that and get paid?
TW: How would you like to be remembered?
AC: Easy. The world’s best dad, husband and son.
TW: What do you see are the biggest issues
facing the industry?
AC: People, people, people and people. Skills and
people is what it is all about now. One of the things I
would love to see happen, which I have never done
anything about but would love to get more involved
with by joining groups like AMEC, is tertiary education.
If you look at tertiary education in Perth we have
WASM and guys at Curtin, Murdoch and UWA.
Imagine if we knocked down that stupid convention
centre and built the Mining University of Australia and
we pooled all these people together, including the
CSIRO, and develop the Mining School of Excellence? I
think that is the sort of thing we need to do.
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