Century Iron Mines appoints new CFO

Century Iron Mines (TSE:FER) has appointed Rebecca Ng as the company's new CFO, with former chief financial officer Ivan Wong now to take the role of senior vice president, corporate finance and project development.

Ng, who has more than 12 years of experience in finance, governance, and reporting in multi-national mining companies, most recently was the financial controller at Xstrata Nickel, from 2006 to this year, before the merger with Glencore International in May. Prior to this, she was group controller at Noranda Inc, and Falconbridge Limited before their acquisition by Xstrata in 2006. 

Meanwhile, Wong, who has worked for KPMG and Ernst & Young, has held positions as financial controller and company secretary for a Hong Kong-listed company, and is also a supervisor of Maanshan Iron & Steel Company. 

The appointments were announced at the company's annual general meeting held last week, where president and CEO Sandy Chim, along with  Ben Koon (David) Wong, Maurice Strong, Howard Bernier, Paul Murphy, Hua Bai, Yi Jun Kuang, Wei Ke Peng and Jionghui Wang were all elected to Century Iron's board of directors. 

Also passed at the meeting, Chim was elected chairman of the board, while Murphy was chosen as lead director. 

Century Iron, which is aiming to become a major iron ore producer, is one of the largest iron ore companies in Canada, in terms of number of claims by area. It has 6,493 claims and titles, covering some 198,779 hectares in the provinces of Québec and Newfoundland & Labrador. It has interests in four iron ore projects, none of which yet generate revenue.    

Earlier this month, the company said that WISCO International has completed its second $20 million equity investment in the Attikamagen iron property, bringing its stake in the joint venture to 40 per cent. 

The Attikamagen property near Schefferville, Quebec is majority held by the joint venture company called Labec Century, which is now owned 40 per cent by WISCO, One of China’s leading steelmakers, and 60 per cent by Century Iron. WISCO has now invested a total of $40 million into the project, which features the Joyce Lake direct shipping ore (DSO) deposit. 

The company in May revealed preliminary economics on the most advanced Joyce Lake deposit at Attikamagen, showing a pre-tax net present value of $94.5 million at an 8 percent discount rate. The internal rate of return was pegged at 35 percent pre-tax, with initial project capex estimated at $96.6 million including contingency, and a projected payback period of just less than three years from production start-up.