Unless junior mining companies are run a whole bunch different from larger mining companies executive management are rarely involved in actual mining. In fact there are quite a few mining companies that a run by people that couldn’t tell the difference between muck and slag. Don’t get me wrong I think mining companies should be run by people with at least some mining experience but that is a whole different story.
Let’s for argument sake assume that Noront will buck the trend and not only discover and delineate a world class deposit but also decide to mine it. I have a hard time believing that with out a massive influx of experienced personal that they will actually be able to accomplish it. For the following reasons:
1) The most obvious they are a geological exploration company, a lot of the lower level staff, not the ones with their CV’s online are very experience field geologists.
2) The following people have mining experience in bulk underground mining (Granted I really don’t want to spend the time to actually research this so I am assuming that the Noront CV page is actually accurate): John Harvey (with Noranda, I am not sure what president of Exploration does, and I am going to assume that it had something to do with feasibility of deposits). The rest of management from what I can see have either academic experience or experience in selective narrow vein deposits, unfortunately mining isn’t like manufacturing cars you cant just jump from a Toyota to a GM (Note: Development and mining of metals refers to I am going to I didn’t not count Patrick Chance despite going to my Alma Mata) as I do not know what . Now does this really make a difference in the management of a company that is operating a mine; no but they defiantly need some experienced base metal/bulk miners, to set up and run the company and last time I checked they don’t exactly grow on trees.
3) It doesn’t make sense, Noront is a geological exploration company, why not get rich doing what they do best
4) Consolidation in the mining industry
5) Lack of Capital