People: Land of milk and money

Erlan Sagadiev, a tough-minded Kazakh entrepreneur who turned a bankrupt dairy into Asia’s largest dairy products group, Asia Foodmaster, is making confident noises about the cash harvest that his present venture, AIM-quoted Frontier Mining, can expect from its Benkala copper project in his home country.

Sagadiev, 41, who was brought in in February to sort things out after Frontier’s shares had all but collapsed, led a £10 million refinancing in May and now suggests that Benkala could eventually generate an annual cash flow of £7 million.

He says Frontier has enough money to proceed with the first part of the plan. According to Sagadiev, the London-headquartered company plans to start producing from an initial open-cut oxide ‘cap’ at Benkala in 2011 at the rate of 20,000 tonnes a year before tackling Benkala’s chief sulphide deposit.

Sagadiev says this could contain an estimated two million tonnes of copper at a grade of 0.6 per cent, yield 250,000 tonnes a year and prove to be a ‘company maker’. Frontier, which owns 50 per cent of Benkala, also has a wholly owned producing gold asset at Naimanjal with copper and molybdenum too, but Sagadiev, originally an agricultural economist, still has interests running far wider than minerals.

He is a frequent adviser to government agencies, companies and individuals on business and economic issues. His own company, Zere Group, also has interests in oil and gas, education and ‘other entrepreneurial developments’.