As a freshly-minted commerce graduate from Potchefstroom University, Labuschagne got his start in South Africa's mining sector, just one day after interviewing with Anglogold, initially as an accountant.

 

He worked his way up the corporate ladder, eventually moving into a finance manager's role at DRD Gold. 

 

That company was looking to expand internationally in the early 2000s, and with interests in Papua New Guinea and Fiji, and Labuschagne leapt at the opportunity to relocate his family to Brisbane, where he still lives, and establish DRD's regional office, for a planned three years.

 

Ultimately, he decided not to return to South Africa, but decided to stay in Australia as a consultant and corporate trouble-shooter, including a stint helping Norton Gold Fields solve hedging litigation and debt refinancing issues with Lehman Brothers in New York. 

 

Ultimately, Norton purchased the Paddington operation in Western Australia from Barrick in 2010 and asked Labuschagne to head up the company.

 

He stayed with Norton until it was taken over by Zijin Group in 2012, and then joined Straits Resources after being approached by a group of common shareholders who wanted to turn Straits around.

 

He agreed to take on the job along with his core Norton executive team: chief financial officer Robert Brainsbury and chief operating officer Ian Sheppard.

 

All three are still at Aeris in 2021, with the company in a much, stronger position, but it probably didn't always look like a turnaround was possible.

 

"We knew what we were getting into, but it was more than we expected," Labuschagne told MNN.

 

"We had A$139 million in debt, and two loss-making mines, so we knew we had to restructure the debt and optimise the two business".

 

Very quickly it became clear that the Mount Muro gold mine in Indonesia "... was just not going to work".

 

"We talked to Credit Suisse, and basically handed over the keys and walked away from the asset and a significant amount of debt," he said.

 

"At the time with was absolutely the right decision. We did not see any other short-term options."

 

That left the company with just the Tritton copper mine in New South Wales.

 

"The team at Tritton really stepped up, got the production up to 30,000 tonnes per annum and turned the mine around, so we could renegotiate our debt terms," Labuschagne said.

 

The company was still in a $110 million hole, and didn't see a way it could ever be able to pay that back, given copper pricing of the day and Tritton's capacity.

 

Labuschagne was able to oversee a debt restructure, spending around 30 months negotiating with Standard Chartered Bank, reducing debt from US$111 million to $50 million through a new senior debt facility. 

 

PAG then purchased the debt and offered a $25 million revolving priority debt facility, and eventually enabled the cancellation of a large chunk of convertible notes for just $1.

 

The company ended with PAG as dominant, supportive shareholder, more manageable debt level, and a sustainable copper operation.

 

Labuschagne's next task was to grow the company, now known as Aeris.

 

He failed the first big attempt, a big deal with then key shareholder Glencore to take on ownership of the CSA mine in the Cobar Basin, in a circa $800 million deal, but they couldn't land on a final price.

 

"It did show we could get support for a sensible deal, so we kept looking at assets in any form, because we just had to do a deal," Labuschagne said.

 

The company next went hard to secure the 20-year-old Cracow gold mine in Queensland from Evolution Mining, and despite issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic border closures that meant it couldn't visit the asset, a deal was done.

 

"This was a deal the company needed to transform the business," Labuschagne said.

 

"Tritton was a good mine, but the copper business was always tight, and it was maturing. Cracow had always generated good cash, and with the help of copper and gold prices, has helped transform business in a short space of time."

 

Over the past 18 months Aeris has become a vastly different company. 

 

It has two operational operations with good exploration success stories, and is net cash positive for the first time in years, with debts down to just $47 million.

 

It was recently able to raise $50 million to accelerate drilling, particularly at the emerging Constellation deposit near Tritton, and it has been able to bring institutional shareholders back onto the register.

 

With the worst behind it, Labuschagne has no plans to go anywhere, and expects to remain as executive chairman, as he says sharing the dual roles works at the moment.

 

He wants to see Aeris transition into a mid-tier, multi-asset miner, with the goal to add to advanced projects in the copper-gold space over the next two years, but he says it now has a different risk appetite.

 

"We're no longer under pressure to add assets, so we can look at bigger and better transactions for tier one assets, because we can see real value in the M&A space."

 

Internally, he hopes Constellation can be in production within three years, supported by new Budgerygar and Avoca Tank developments, and the exploration target of 3-4Mt at Kurrajong, to step in at Tritton gets deeper and its grade declines.  

 

At Constellation, near mine exploration has also been promising for additional gold production.