Kaizen Discovery Announces Key Management Changes
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - May 2, 2016) - Kaizen Discovery Inc. (TSX VENTURE:KZD) announced today that it has appointed three experienced mining executives to Kaizen's management team. Joining the company effective immediately are Charlie Forster, as Vice President, Exploration, Mark Gibson, as Chief Operating Officer, and Sam Riggall, as Commercial Advisor.
"The addition of Messrs. Forster, Gibson and Riggall is part of the transformation undertaken over the past few months to restructure Kaizen's management team and position the company for future growth," said Eric Finlayson, Kaizen's Interim Chief Executive Officer. "With a renewed management team and an improving mining exploration environment, we believe the company is now better positioned to take advantage of growth opportunities."
Mr. Forster, P. Geo., has more than 45 years of diversified mineral exploration experience in Canada, United States, Sub-Saharan Africa, Portugal, China and Mongolia. Mr. Forster was formerly the Senior Vice President of Exploration at Oyu Tolgoi in Mongolia for Ivanhoe Mines (now Turquoise Hill Resources) from early 2001 to June 2008. During this time, he led a team of multi-national and Mongolian geologists in the discovery and delineation of the world-class Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold porphyry deposit. The discovery of the massive, high-grade Hugo Dummett underground deposit at Oyu Tolgoi was subsequently recognized by the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada, which in 2004 named Mr. Forster a co-recipient of the inaugural Thayer Lindsley Medal awarded for the International Discovery of the Year. In a further recognition of Mr. Forster's exploration achievements at Oyu Tolgoi, in 2008 Mr. Forster received the AME BC Colin Spence Award for Excellence in Global Mineral Exploration for the discovery of the Heruga Deposit on the southern end of the Oyu Tolgoi Trend. Mr. Forster also has been appointed as Vice President Exploration of High Power Exploration Inc. (HPX), Kaizen's parent company.
Mr. Gibson, a geoscientist, is the Chief Operating Officer of HPX. He joined HPX in 2011 as the company's founding Chief Executive Officer and was instrumental in the formation of Kaizen in 2013, through the corporate reorganization of Concordia Resource, and HPX's strategic partnership with Cordoba Minerals. Before joining HPX, Mr. Gibson worked with Anglo American, and was the founder of a geophysical service company focused on managing seismic surveys for the mining industry. He has more than 26 years of wide-ranging experience as a geoscientist and manager in the natural resources sector.
Mr. Riggall is currently Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Clean TeQ Holdings, an Australian company developing the Syerston scandium project in New South Wales. He previously was Executive Vice President of business development and strategic planning at Ivanhoe Mines from 2010 to 2012. He also worked at Rio Tinto for more than a decade in a variety of roles covering project generation and evaluation, business development and capital market transactions, and was Rio Tinto's chief negotiator for the Oyu Tolgoi Investment Agreement. He has extensive mining industry experience in many parts of the world and worked in a variety of commodity and functional roles, including industrial minerals, base metals, exploration, investment evaluation, business development and capital market transactions.
Mr. Finlayson also announced that Dr. David Broughton has resigned as the company's Executive Vice President, Exploration, effective April 30, 2016, to pursue other opportunities. Dr. Broughton will continue to work with Kaizen as a consultant on an as-needed basis. Anthony Abbenante, Vice President, also resigned his position effective April 30, 2016, to dedicate more time to Ivanhoe Industries, the ultimate parent company of HPX.
"The company and Board thank Dr. Broughton and Mr. Abbenante for their hard work and commitment in advancing the company's exploration and financing initiatives, and we wish them all the best in their future endeavours," said Mr. Finlayson.
About Kaizen Discovery
Kaizen is a Canadian mineral exploration and development company with a portfolio of exploration projects in Canada and Peru. Kaizen's long-term growth strategy is to work with Japanese entities to identify, explore and develop high-quality mineral projects that have the potential to produce and deliver minerals to Japan's industrial sector.
More information on Kaizen is available at www.kaizendiscovery.com.
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FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
Statements in this news release that are forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning the specific factors disclosed here and elsewhere in both Kaizen's periodic filings with Canadian securities regulators. When used in this news release, words such as "believe", "will", "could", "plan", "estimate", "expect", "intend", "may", "potential", "should," and similar expressions, are forward-looking statements. Information provided in this document is necessarily summarized and may not contain all available material information.
Although Kaizen has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements, there can be other factors that cause results, performance or achievements not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate or that management's expectations or estimates of future developments, circumstances or results will materialize.
Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements in this news release are made as of the date of this news release, and Kaizen disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise such information, except as required by applicable law, and Kaizen does not assume any liability for disclosure relating to any other company herein.