PASSIONATE ABOUT SOUTH AMERICA BUT HAPPY TO BE BACK IN CANADA

Having worked on three continents and in seven countries, Andina Minerals’ President and Chief Executive Officer George Bee has settled in Toronto.

He and his wife Giovanna Mossoro, a native of Peru and a senior counsel for Barrick Gold, are raising their two youngsters where they can run through the backyards and play with the neighbours’ children. It is a far cry from the walled and guarded house they were renting in Peru when they met 11 years ago.

Not only families but mining thrives in this country.

“Canada’s a wonderful place, especially from the perspective of the mineral business,” Bee told CMJ. “The numbers of companies and the depth of knowledge here are terrific. You can do more business here in a day than anywhere else.”

That doesn’t mean he has lost any of his passion for South America.

“There is lots of opportunity in South America,” he told CMJ. It is a resource-rich continent and also rich in its human resource. “The people there are wonderful. They have a strong work ethic and a desire to make a better life for themselves.”

Especially in countries that have weathered recent financial difficulties, there is a desire to go forward rather than slip back into an economic abyss, Bee explained. Mining is seen as a way of ensuring a prosperous future for themselves and their children.

Since graduating from the Camborne School of Mines in Cornwall in 1979, Bee has seen a good portion of what the world’s mining industry has to offer. He left the United Kingdom in 1980, where he started out in the tin mines, and worked in South Africa for nine years. He emigrated to Canada in 1988 as a landed immigrant and went to work for Barrick. That company sent him to the Goldstrike project in Nevada from 1989 to 1995. He then moved on to Salt Lake City, Utah, to work for Kinross Gold for three years.

Barrick once more beckoned and Bee rejoined the company. His employer sent him to the Pierna project in Peru in July 1998. It was the first South American greenfield project for both the company and Bee. Then he went to Chile to work on the Pascua Lama project between 2000 and 2002. From there it was on to the start-up of the Veladero mine on the eastern slope of the Andes Mountains, in Argentina. He remained there as general manager until 2005.

Bee returned to Canada with Barrick, noting that he had to go through the entire immigration process again, “You wouldn’t believe the hoops I had to jump through and the many times I had my fingerprints taken over the years as I moved from place to place,” he said. The second immigration to Canada accomplished, he went to work with Aurelian Resources, which had a project in Ecuador, until that company was acquired by Kinross Gold.

Does one of the many foreign projects Bee has worked at stand out in his mind as the most interesting?

“All of them have been wonderful,” he said, “but I think Argentina and Veladero were the most interesting.”

Was there ever a boring project? “There has never been a ‘boring’ project,” Bee said. “All projects have their idiosyncrasies, and the key to success is accommodating a fairly standard approach in the application of the technology and the business model to the local circumstances at the mine.

“I can say that some places are more hospitable than others, and I’m glad to say that travelling to Chile in my current role is no hardship,” he added.

Bee has been at the helm of Andina since January 2009. He is leading the team behind the company’s early development Volcan project in Chile’s Region III, a two-hour drive east of Copiapo. The property lies in the prolific Maricunga district where more than 60 million oz of gold have been outlined. The Volcan property has measured and indicted resources of 492.5 million tonnes grading 0.62 g/t Au or 9.8 million oz. Add the gold contained in the inferred resource, and the total approaches 10.5 million oz with several million more ounces outside the proposed open pit design.

Ten million oz of gold is more than enough to keep a person going back to South America, but there is one place Bee would like to revisit. “I’d like to return to San Juan, Argentina, and the Veladero mine because you always wonder what kind of legacy you left.”

At the rate he is going, Bee will be leaving a trail of profitable mines along the Andes.