Eight years ago, Greg Kuenzel swapped life as corporate finance advisor in Perth, Western Australia, for an opportunity to join the Australian mining crowd in London. Having spent several years working with small exploration companies he had developed a taste for the sector and has since been involved in a number of junior resource stocks. Last December he brought his latest venture to the Alternative Investment Market. As the chief executive of Noricum Gold (LON:NMG), Kuenzel is eyeing the prospect of gold exploration and production at projects in Austria.

Noricum was originally listed on PLUS Markets in June 2010 at the same time as Kuenzel, the company’s chairman Marcus Edwards-Jones, and their mining advisors identified, negotiated and acquired the Austrian licences. The company switched its listing to AIM last December and has now launched an exploration programme at its two main targets – the highly prospective Rotgülden and Kliening projects. With the price of gold surging last year and recently hitting a record high of $1,462, the investment case for backing small-cap gold explorers like Noricum looks increasingly compelling. Indeed, the company had no trouble raising £2.12m on its admission to the market. With exploration now under way in Austria, investors are watching to see how and when the company could build value quickly. The answer to that could lie in 100,000 tons of old tailings dumps at the Kliening project, which could provide a near-term cash boost to fund exploration and development elsewhere and drive the company’s strategy to become a significant gold producer in the country.

Greg, before we talk about Noricum Gold, tell me about your background and your experience with junior resource companies.

I moved to London almost eight years ago now and started working with a couple of Australian mining entrepreneurs who were quite active in the AIM market at the time. They had just been involved with the float of Asia Energy [now Global Coal Management (LON:GCM) ] and were also involved in Empyrean Energy (LON:EME) . It was a buoyant time in the AIM market and we had a lot of interest from investors in the mining and resource sector. We set up two AIM cash shells at the time, one being Summit Resources, which went on to…

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