Since turning his attention away from pure play mineral exploration during 2009, Dr Bob Foster has orchestrated a string of partnership deals that could see his company become a gold producer by the end of next year. For the chief executive of AIM listed Stratex International (LON:STI), the key has been to blend his team’s core skills of notching up significant gold discoveries with winning over strong support from top-tier industry backers.
Since joining AIM in December 2005, Stratex, under the stewardship of Bob Foster and chairman David Hall, have built a portfolio of projects in Turkey and are now embarking on a major exploration push into Ethiopia. At its Turkish projects at Inlice and Altintepe, the company has secured support from local engineering group NTF Insaat Ticaret. Meanwhile, Canadian major Centerra Gold (TSX:CG) is bankrolling the Öksüt project and Teck Resources (NYSE:TCK) is doing the same at Hasançelebi.
Moving on, a joint venture signed last year with Sheba Exploration (PLUS:SHE) secured a foothold in Ethiopia, a country that Stratex believes has considerable potential for the discovery of gold deposits, particularly in the emerging epithermal district in the Afar / Eastern Africa Rift Valley. If the East African Rift Valley rings a bell, this is of course the geology which has proved such fertile hunting ground in Uganda for oil explorers like Heritage Oil (LON:HOIL) and Tullow Oil Plc (LON:TLW) and which is being actively explored in Ethiopia by African Oil Corporation (CVE:AOI) and Victoria Oil & Gas (LON:VOG) .
Bob Foster spoke to Stockopedia News about the company’s drive towards production in Turkey and the prospects for its exciting new exploration projects in Ethiopia.
Bob, the last time we spoke you were striding ahead with a new strategy to blend your exploration skills with the prospect of actually getting some of your projects into production. After a torrid year for miners in 2008/2009, what sort of shape was Stratex in at the start of 2010?
We had regrouped and reorganised ourselves. Early last year we realised that we needed to get our strategies across to the market – and those strategies were to ‘monetise’. We could not afford just to be seen as an exploration company which was waiting for ‘the big one’. That was never our intention but we did get the impression…
