另类职场 采矿项目的成功要素

Gold miners call it “the first pour” — the moment when liquid gold, the initial ounces recovered from tonnes of crushed and chemically treated rock, is carefully channelled into a mould. An ingot of precious metal is formed; the assembled workforce cheers; and a miner’s arduous life once more seems worthwhile.

黄金矿工称它为“第一注”(the first pour)——从数吨经过碾磨和化学处理的矿石中提炼出来的熔化状态黄金，被小心导入一个模子的那一刻。一块金锭成形了，围着观看的矿工们发出欢呼，他们的艰辛生活再一次看上去有了价值。

When that moment arrives at the New Liberty Mine in Liberia at the end of this month, David Reading says, he might finally realise that he and Aureus Mining, where he is chief executive, have successfully built a gold mine.

在利比里亚的New Liberty矿，矿企Aureus Mining的首席执行官戴维•里丁(David Reading)说，当那个时刻来临时，他或许才终于会意识到：他和Aureus Mining成功建起了一座金矿。

“I guess it hasn’t sunk in . . . I am too busy worrying about making sure that we meet all our other milestones,” says Mr Reading, speaking in Aureus’s London office. “I am flying [to Liberia] at the end of the month and I think it is going to hit me then.”

“我猜之前我还没来得及消化这一切进展……我忙于确保到达其他所有里程碑，要操心的事情太多。”里丁在Aureus位于伦敦的办公室里说，“我在5月底要飞往（利比里亚），我想，到那时我才会突然意识到这件事。”

After 35 years in the gold industry, most of it in Africa, this is Mr Reading’s first “first pour” as a CEO. Aureus, a small miner with a stock market value in London of about £110m, has built New Liberty in four years, which as Mr Reading points out is not a long time in mining.

在黄金业工作35年（大部分时间是在非洲）后，这是里丁作为首席执行官第一次经历“第一注”。在伦敦上市、市值约1.1亿英镑的小矿商Aureus，用4年时间建成了New Liberty矿。正如里丁所指出的，在采矿业，4年不是一段很长的时期。

“It is a remarkable achievement,” he says. “Probably all chief executives say they are remarkable. But in the context of the industry it is a big achievement.”

“这是一项了不起的成就。”他说，“很可能每个首席执行官都会认为自己很了不起。但放在这个行业的大背景中，这确实是项很大的成就。”

Aureus has completed New Liberty, at a cost of $172m, in one of the most unforgiving environments for mining. It is the first commercial gold mine in Liberia, the west African country that emerged from civil war little more than a decade ago. It has been built in the teeth of a west African Ebola epidemic and during the worst downturn in gold mining in more than a decade.

Aureus以1.72亿美元的成本，在极恶劣的采矿环境里，完成了New Liberty矿的建设。这是利比里亚的首座商业性金矿。这个西非国家十多年前才刚刚结束内战。建设过程中，他们遭遇了西非的埃博拉疫情，还遭遇了黄金采矿业十多年来最严重的低迷。

In the circumstances, says Mr Reading, who spends an average of one week a month at the mine, a slight delay in completing New Liberty is acceptable. “We were trying to make March [for the initial gold production] but you can’t script an Ebola epidemic. It is not something you put in your strategy sessions.”

鉴于这些情况，里丁说，New Liberty矿稍微延迟一些完工是可以接受的。他每个月平均要在那座金矿待一周时间。“我们曾经试图赶在3月（启动金矿的初期开采），但是谁料得到会有埃博拉呢。这不是你在制定战略时会考虑的情况。”

This month Liberia — one of the three countries most afflicted by the Ebola outbreak, along with Guinea and Sierra Leone — was declared free of the disease by the World Health Organisation, after 42 days without new cases reported.

5月，世界卫生组织(WHO)宣布利比里亚的埃博拉疫情结束，之前该国已有42天没有报告新的病例。利比里亚是受埃博拉疫情影响最严重的3个国家之一（另外两个是几内亚和塞拉利昂）。

Mr Reading recalls how a year ago the first Ebola cases were reported in the country, and how the disease grew into a serious outbreak that the 1,000 workers at New Liberty, 100km from Liberia’s capital Monrovia, had to confront.

里丁回忆起一年前，利比里亚报告首批埃博拉病例，随后埃博拉演变成一场严重的疫情，让距离首都蒙罗维亚100公里的New Liberty的1000名工人不得不努力应对。

By July, Mr Reading says, the Ebola epidemic “hit CNN” and alarm grew. “A lot of organisations left very quickly and a lot of planes stopped operating. What we had to do was get our minds around this quickly and not panic — panicking doesn’t really help.”

里丁说，到了去年7月，埃博拉疫情“上了CNN”，情况越来越危急。“许多组织很快离开，许多航班停止营运。我们当时必须做的就是尽快搞清楚这是怎么回事、克制恐慌的冲动——恐慌于事无补。”

At the time, Aureus was engaged in building for the project, including the mills, conveyors and tanks for processing ore that it will dig from a 2km-long open pit. “The big challenge was ‘How do we carry on building?’ We were more than half way through . . . for a small company to stop then, you would pretty much bankrupt yourself. But on the other hand you can’t carry on if you are going to endanger your employees. That was the dilemma I had.”

当时，Aureus正投入项目建设，包括碾磨厂、输送机、以及矿石处理槽（矿石将从一个2公里长的露天矿坑采掘出来）。“巨大的挑战在于，‘我们如何继续建设’？我们已经进行到一半多了……对一个小公司而言，在这个阶段停下，基本就相当于自我宣告破产。但另一方面，如果你会让员工置身于危险，你就不能继续。那就是我当时面临的两难境地。”

New Liberty quarantined itself be­hind roadblocks and kept two doctors on site. Contractors, most of them used to working in Africa, were flown in and out using Liberia’s military airport. With New Liberty only 100km from the nearest port, most supplies kept arriving. No Ebola cases arose at the project.

New Liberty进行了自我隔离，设置路障，还安排两名医生驻守矿区。合同工（其中大多数人习惯于在非洲工作）利用利比里亚的军用机场出入境。New Liberty离最近的港口仅100公里，因此大多数物资仍不断到达。整个项目团队没有出现一例埃博拉病例。

Tom Butler, until recently head of min­ing at the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank arm and one of Aureus’s biggest investors, says Mr Reading rallied the workforce to commit to the project by going to the mine. “It was personal leadership at its best,” says Mr Butler.

直到不久前一直是国际金融公司(International Finance Corporation)矿业主管的汤姆•巴特勒(Tom Butler)表示，里丁亲自来到矿址，这鼓舞了员工，让他们坚守这个项目。“这是以身作则的最佳案例。”国际金融公司是世界银行(World Bank)旗下机构，也是Aureus的最大股东之一。

Aureus is one of countless small gold mining companies peppered across the planet, holding licences for deposits that — with the right mix of luck, judgment and financial backing — might one day become a functioning gold mine. Mr Reading previously worked with Randgold, the UK’s largest listed gold miner, and was later CEO of European Goldfields, sold in 2011 for $2.4bn. When he joined Aureus shortly before it listed in the UK and Canada in 2011, he visited New Liberty and was confident that a mine could be successfully developed.

Aureus是世界各地无数小型黄金开采公司中的一家，持有矿藏执照——借助运气、判断力和财务支持，这些矿藏有朝一日可能会变成一座开采出黄金的金矿。里丁之前曾效力于英国最大的黄金上市公司——兰德黄金(Randgold)，后来成为European Goldfields的首席执行官（该公司2011年以24亿美元被出售）。2011年，Aureus在英国和加拿大上市，他在公司上市前不久加入。他走访了New Liberty，确信可成功开发一座金矿。

His strategic dilemma was whether to get the mine into production as quickly as possible rather than carry on exploring the area in search of more gold — even though more discoveries could have enhanced the value of the project and company. “People were saying ‘Just carry on exploring and make lots of ounces’,” he says. “I said: ‘This is a cyclical business’. If you don’t walk before you can run, you will end up with something where you have no funding and you don’t know where to go with it.”

他在战略上的两难是，要不要尽快让该矿投产，而不是继续对该地区进行勘探、寻找更多黄金——即使发现更多黄金矿藏可能会增加项目和公司的价值？“别人都说‘你应该继续勘探、增加黄金储量。”他说，“我说：‘这是一个存在周期性的行业’。如果你没学会走路就奔跑，到头来你可能连资金都搞不定，而且不知道该怎么办。”

It appears to have been the right decision. Six months after Aureus listed in 2011, the gold price peaked at more than $1,900 per ounce and started to retreat. Late in 2012 Aureus raised $80m of equity, a significant chunk of New Liberty’s construction cost. By the time the gold price fall accelerated in 2013, Aureus was already building. “The whole approach was ‘Let’s get this up and running’. The boom time wasn’t going to last for ever,” says Mr Reading.

这看上去是个正确的决定。Aureus于2011年上市6个月后，金价达到每盎司逾1900美元的顶点，然后开始下跌。2012年末，Aureus筹资了8000万美元的股本，这相当于New Liberty的一大半建设成本。到2013年金价开始加速下滑时，Aureus已经开工建设了。里丁说：“当时我们的基本原则就是‘只管尽快建好投产’。繁荣期不会永久持续。”

“We have been able to fund a project in the downturn. That doesn’t normally happen — and if you can fund a project in a downturn you will definitely reap the rewards of the next upturn.”

“我们得以在低迷期保证了项目所需资金。这是比较罕见的成就——如果你能够在低迷期保证一个项目所需资金，你肯定会在下一个繁荣期获得回报。”

The ingredients of a successful mine are not particularly complex, Mr Reading insists: lots of gold at a high grade; good people, who are not fazed by the challenges that inevitably arise; and “an enabling government”. Liberia, whose president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has visited the project, has been encouraging, Mr Reading says. “The other challenges are pretty stan­dard for Africa: logistics, supply routes, terrain, rainfall. You will get that every­where.”

里丁坚持认为，采矿项目成功的必备要素并不复杂：大量高品位黄金；靠谱的团队，不会被难免出现的困难所吓倒；以及“政府的支持”。里丁说，利比里亚政府一直非常支持，总统埃伦•约翰逊•瑟利夫(Ellen Johnson Sirleaf)曾视察过该项目。“其他困难都是在非洲非常普遍的：物流、供应路线、地形、以及降雨。你在任何地方都会遇到这些问题。”

Mr Reading owns a small percentage of Aureus and is painfully aware that gold shares have been “hammered” over the past three years. Gold is now at about $1,200/oz, cutting the returns from the many projects that were planned in an era of higher prices.

里丁拥有Aureus的一小部分股份，他非常清楚黄金矿商的股票在过去3年遭受“重创”。眼下金价约为每盎司1200美元，这使得许多在金价较高时期规划的项目回报减少。

Even with production close, Aureus shares are almost 75 per cent lower than when the company listed four years ago. Options that Mr Reading owns for more shares are mostly worthless at current prices. “If I want to make money I have to make the shareholders money.”

即便将要投产，Aureus的股价仍比4年前公司上市时低近75%。按照现在的价格，里丁拥有的可让他获得更多股票的期权几乎一文不值。“如果我想赚到钱，我得让股东们赚到钱。”

Aureus will be profitable, he says, and calls New Liberty a “starter kit” for further development in Liberia, where the company has other licences.

他说，Aureus会盈利的，他还说，New Liberty将是公司在利比里亚的“起跳板”，他们在利比里亚还持有其他执照。

“We need to get it up and running, get revenue and reinvest it in further growth,” he says. “What gets me out of bed in the morning is seeing a good asset developed and knowing that there are plenty of others we can develop.”

“我们需要把这座矿启动起来，获得收入，再投入于未来的增长。”他说，“我每天起床的动力就是看到我们开发了一项优质资产，并且知道还有其他很多项目有待开发。”