Fortuna Silver Mines (FVI-T) news, despite progress having been painfully slow since late October, when Mr. Ganoza, president and CEO, said that the mine was 81-per-cent complete. He concedes that Fortuna will miss its target of placing ore on the leach pad before the end of the year, which he attributed to "minor delays and unavailability of vendors" because of the holidays.
North American grinches who grumble about the length of the Christmas season had best avoid Latin America and Argentina in particular. Indeed, it will apparently be mid-January before Mr. Ganoza and his crew can lure the vendor technicians back to the site to carry out precommissioning of the remaining parts of the plant. (On the other hand, the company's main construction workers will beaver away through Christmas, taking just a one-week break centred on New Year's Day.)
The holiday delays aside, Mr. Ganoza says that Fortuna is in the final phase of a two-year, $300-million (U.S.) construction project and the end is in sight -- it is just taking longer to arrive than hoped and is following a more expensive route. When construction began in October of 2017, the proposed $240-million (U.S.), 18,750-tonne-per-day mine was expected to be completed in early 2019.
Mr. Ganoza, a 50-year-old resident of Lima, Peru, has been president since 2006 and CEO since 2008. He does very well, drawing a $600,000 (U.S.) annual salary for the past several years, a stipend buoyed by hefty cash bonuses each year, not to mention huge grants of options and restricted stock units each year. All that makes for a comfortable life in Lima, and although shareholders who paid just 38 cents for their shares in 2008 may not object, those who shelled out more than $12 per share in 2016 are probably feeling a little unChristmassy these days. |
