Mr. James Polson, Executive Director of AIDD interviewed by Mongolian Mining Journal
Tell us about what kind of mining service AIDD offers the Mongolian mining industry and how long have you been in Mongolia?I have been in Mongolia since early 2002, AIDD Group offers a broad range of services from basic exploration drilling through to contract mining services. The group also offers HSE training and certification services to outside parties along with an expatriate Human Capital service.
Which areas /provinces of Mongolia have you worked? What is your best known mineral, coal or gold or copper? We have worked in most provinces in Mongolia and currently have projects underway that span all across the country. AIDD prides itself on being the leading specialists in Coal and Water drilling in Mongolia. We are also leaders in hard rock drilling, especially deep hole and directional drilling.
Who are your customers? We have many customers ranging from Domestic Mongolian companies through to the gest companies in the global mining sector such as BHPB and VALE.
Do you make JORC CODE drilling?
All our drilling is conducted in line with the JORC or 43-101 standards and we place guarantees in our contracts to such standards.
Which is most common service that companies in Mongolia want? (rotary, drilling, water bore/well, geo-technical…etc)
That is a very interesting question as most companies want the cheapest solution. We find thatmost of the time they actually don’t know what it is they want. We spend a lot of time with our clients, we see them as partners and we work with them to design their programs and projects to ensure they get the best value for money. Many times we are called by a company who has used another service provider and they have already spent a lot of money on projects that have not provided them with the results they have needed. Most of the time we can save our clients a lot of money by simply sitting down and working through the planning stages with them and providing them with the most suitable drilling technique.
What’s your feeling on Mongolian business environment,business cost or how is to doing business in here or finding difficulties?
Mongolia is one of the best places to do business as a service provider in the world. Some of the difficulties are that the costs of doing business here are soaring and the market needs to adjust to this. The main reason for this is the soaring labour costs, we have now trained some of the leading drillers in not just Mongolia but the whole international market and we are always losing them to Australia and Africa where they are attracted to very large expat salaries. It is fair to say now that our Senior Mongolian drillers can make as much money as an Australian Expat in Mongolia. The issue we have is that a lot of foreign companies in Mongolia do not put the time and effort into training the Mongolian work force and in turn demand that we put expatriates on their project site. This is the single most frustrating thing of being a Mongolian service provider.
Tell us about AIDD traineeship program? How many people attended and how much of them got job?
The Mongolian trainee program is a relatively new program that we have in place. At the unskilled and skilled labour level we have always ran such programs and I would say on average 90% of the trainee’s obtain a full time job and make their way through to Snr levels on the technical side of the business. The management trainee initiative is only in its first 12 months and we are still working our way through our first candidates, our intern program that we have had in place for around 4 years has provided around a 50% average return on retaining graduates on completion of their studies.
Share us your opinion on the future of mining service sector of Mongolia?
For Mongolian companies such as AIDD who are willing to adopt and maintain international standards the future is very bright. As you know AIDD is now competing against some of the world’s largest drilling services not just in Mongolia but on the international stage. I sense that the future for foreign Mining service in Mongolia will be limited as the Mongolian people are fast learners. To be frank I do not believe that a lot of the foreign companies that are currently operating in this space in Mongolia are putting enough effort or resources into training their Mongolian employee’s for them to ever develop a Mongolian only operation in Mongolia.
Do you drill in winter?
We drill through all 12 months of the year, we are now finding that we are busier in winter than we are in the summer months, this seems to be due to our clients lack of funding or results from the early spring seasons not coming through until late in the fall.
Finally, are orders/clients increasing?
We now turn away more contracts than we take on, this is primarily due to our human capital constraints with our current work force. We are forever losing our employees to the promises of foreign companies and expatriate postings in Africa or Australia. We believe in the coming 12 to 18 months that we will see a lot of these employee’s returning back to the AIDD Group which will allow us to increase our contract base and take a greater market share from our foreign competitors.