AMN - INDABA: Tietto victorious in Investment Battlefield

Tietto Minerals won the Investment Battlefield challenge at last week’s annual Investing in African Mining Indaba in Cape Town.  The challenge sees junior miners pitch their African projects to investor judges and this year an actual boxing ring in the main exhibition area of the event served as the stage for the contenders.

Tietto’s executive director Mark Strizek impressed the judges with the company’s entry - Fast-tracking the development of the Abujar Gold Project – and emerged as the overall winner.

The Abujar project is about 30 kilometres from the regional city of Daloa in central-western Côte D’Ivoire and hosts a resource of 45.5 million tonnes at 1.5 g/t for 2.15 million ounces of contained gold.

By the final day of the Investment Battlefield program, Tietto Minerals was joined in the final round by ARC Minerals, represented by finance director Remy Welschinger; Eco Graf, represented by MD Andrew Spinks; and Roscan Gold Corp represented by president and CEO Nana Bompeh Sangmuah.

In announcing the winner, Paydirt Media's editor Dominic Piper spoke of the key features of Tietto’s pitch and said they had taken three things into consideration in their final selection - the strength of fundamentals of the commodity; the quality of the asset; and the quality of the team itself in realising shareholder value.

Commenting on the win, Strizek acknowledged the strength of the competition and said it would give Tietto a chance to raise their profile and gain new investors and shareholders.

Emerging mining companies with projects in Africa and with a market cap of up to $50 million are eligible to apply and an initial screening sees successful applicants grouped according to commodity and lifecycle stage.

From this point, companies are invited to pitch their project to the investor judges, where they have just five minutes to put their best business case forward, after which judges provide feedback for 10 minutes.

Not only do emerging miners get the opportunity to pit their project against those of their peers, but also receive invaluable feedback based on the expertise of the judges.

A series of knockout rounds gradually reduces the contenders until an ultimate winner is identified.

This year, the final battle between juniors was judged by Investec Asset Management portfolio manager George Cheveley; Public Investment Corporation sector specialist mining Heidi Sternberg, Traxys Projects managing director Erez Ichilov; and Eurasian Resource Group head of corporate development Jonathan Cordero.

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