Dear VMS followers,

Recently, Secutor Capital Management Corp of Toronto, Ontario published an interview with VMS CEO Rick Mark and COO Neil Richardson. The conversation covers a variety of topics that are of interest to VMS shareholders and so we felt we should bring it to your attention. It is reprinted below.

Also, we have posted the 5th episode of our VMS/NAN Podcast series, where Neil Richardson discusses the mine development team working on the high grade Reed Copper Project near Snow Lake, Manitoba, which is expected to be in production in Q4 of this year. To access the Podcast, please visit our website http://vmsventures.com/Newsroom/Podcasts/default.aspx 

John Roozendaal

President
VMS Ventures Inc.

VMS owns ~27.5% of NAN

Rick Mark and Neil Richardson, CEO and COO of VMS Ventures Inc, discuss progress at the Reed Copper Mine, which is a jointly owned project with HudBay currently ramping up to production. They also provide insight into the Maniitsoq project. Maniitsoq is a high grade Ni-Cu-Co-PGM project located in Greenland with the potential for camp-scale mineralization.

VMS and Hudbay have a 30/70 JV on the Reed copper deposit in Manitoba. How is development progressing? Is production still scheduled to begin Q1 2014?

Rick: I think it’s useful to preface the answer with Neil’s experience at Hudbay. He worked for them for 13 years and has a relationship with the guys on the ground. When I was there for the mine opening, I was impressed with the way the guys interacted with Neil in terms of getting his feedback on the mine plans that were being developed. Our relationship with Hudbay, through Neil, presents a unique situation as the Hudbay guys already know and trust Neil. That is very good for VMS.

Neil: Thanks Rick. Like Rick said, I worked for 13 years with Hudbay. I spent three of them up at the Ruttan Cu-Zn Mine as a Senior Mine Geologist and I spent the last 10 years in exploration, working as a Project Geologist and Senior Exploration Geologist for Hudbay. The team at the mine-site is from Trout Lake, Flin Flon, and Leaf Rapids. Since I also worked at Trout Lake as a Senior Exploration Geologist for about 2 years during the early 2000’s, doing the underground development and expanding on the resources and reserves there, we have a prior working relationship. A lot of those guys are still around.

Things are progressing really well at Reed. I was up there just a couple weeks ago. The ramp is down 530 m laterally, which puts us almost to the 60 m level vertically.  We had some trouble with the ground conditions early on, but we got through that and now we’re getting back into decent ground. We’re progressing close to a rate of 6 m per day for ramp development, and eventually our plan is to get to 8 m a day at multiple headings. The delays put us back a little bit in the production schedule, but not critically. We’re planning for 51,000 tonnes to come out of the mine this year.  Full production at 1300 tpd, is scheduled for the latter part of Q1 2014. We need to get the ramp down to the 230-260 m level to finish up the project. Production will be on schedule. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE