Ron Thiessen runs the biggest mining company you've never heard of.
For nearly three decades, Hunter Dickinson Inc. (HDI), where Thiessen is CEO, has done a superb job keeping its name out of the headlines, preferring to quietly incubate exploration companies that break onto the scene with their own investment brands.
Over the years, HDI's under-the-radar approach has resulted in thousands of jobs across B.C. and had a major impact on the provincial economy.
Some of the earliest companies it launched included:
•North American Metals Ltd., which helped develop the Golden Bear mine near Dease Lake;
•Continental Gold Corp., which found and explored the Mount Milligan gold-copper property that is now being developed into a $1.5 billion mine near Fort St. James;
•El Condor Resources, which developed the northern B.C. Kemess gold-copper project that eventually became a mine; and
•Taseko Mines (TSX:TKO), which operates the Gibraltar copper mine near Williams Lake and plans to build the $1.1 billion New Prosperity project not far away.
"We've always had an affinity for British Columbia," Thiessen, 59, recently told Business in Vancouver.
But HDI's ambitions reach far beyond B.C. The privately held company, founded by Robert Hunter and Robert Dickinson in 1985, has mines and mineral projects throughout North America, Africa, Europe and Asia.
It even once bid on a large copper project in Afghanistan.
"They're not afraid of controversy," said Bernie Zinkhofer, a partner at McMillan LLP in Vancouver who's known Thiessen and done legal work for HDI since the mid-1980s.
In fact, Thiessen has had even bigger ambitions for HDI – to take it public and compete with the likes of mining giant Teck Resources (TSX:TCK.B).
A couple of years ago, HDI's principals met with institutional investors and funds to flesh out a plan to take the company public and capitalize on the projects and intellectual know-how acquired during the last two decades.
The idea was to hit the market with an IPO valued at approximately $1 billion, but the banks had a hard time getting on board principally because, as Thiessen points out, HDI's real value is in its people.
"The real assets is HDI, the 160 people [it employs in Vancouver], the knowledge, the intellectual property … institutions struggle with that," he said.
Thiessen's big idea remains on hold, but it hasn't died.
"I still see the same benefit in doing it, creating a company that really is an integrated mining company," said Thiessen. "Now, we're going to have to have a different mindset and therefore a different group of people to run that. Our mindset has been to develop a resource, to develop a project to a certain level."
For now, HDI's game plan remains much the same: to provide service and support for its group of eight mining companies.
The ultimate plan is to help those companies either get bought out or build their projects into mines.
Great Basin Gold (TSX:GBG), another HDI company, has successfully built its Burnstone gold project into a mine in South Africa.
Last year, HDI closed two major buyouts. The first was centred on Farallon Mining, which Nyrstar NV bought for $409 million.Shortly after that, HDI's Continental Minerals was sold to China's Jinchuan Mining Groupfor $432 million.
Zinkhofer said Thiessen is rare among Vancouver's cluster of mining executives in that his corporate successes have outweighed his "bloopers."
"It's very rare for people to be involved in more than one or two, but he's had several," Zinkhofer said.
Born and raised in Saskatchewan, Thiessen wasn't always destined for the mining business.
His family built a successful truck and farming business in Saskatchewan (T&T Group of Companies).
After a few years hauling rigs, Thiessen got his bachelor of commerce and came to Vancouver to article for an accounting firm.
In 1980, he struck out on his own, helping develop a few private companies before moving into the venture capital and private equity business.
By the mid-1980s, Thiessen was involved with a junior mining company that was exploring what it believed to be a hot graphite property.
The project didn't pay off, which Thiessen said was ultimately a major learning experience. (The project, Bissett Creek in Ontario, is being developed today by Northern Graphite (TSX-V:NGC).)After that, Thiessen got involved with the development of Mount Milligan, which was sold in the early 1990s to Placer Domefor $180 million – a deal he said helped him realize the wealth the mining business could generate.
"The resource business is truly taking something where there was nothing, investing $10 million in it and it's worth $100 million," he said. "It's true wealth, and I just got hooked on the business."
In the years since, Thiessen has been involved in innumerable projects. Some have paid off.
But others, like Taseko's New Prosperity project, have yet to hit pay dirt.
And no career in the mining business would be complete without a few controversies.
In 2010, Thiessen, Farallon Mining and its president and CEO Dick Whittington won a $425,000 defamation case in BC Supreme Court against Internet poster Robert Butlerfor defamatory statements.
HDI also faces controversy in Arizona, where one of its companies, Curis Resources (TSX:CUV), is attempting to build a copper mine near Florence city limits.
In Alaska, HDI's Northern Dynasty Minerals (TSX:NDM) continues to face backlash from fishermen and environmentalists who allege development of the massive Pebble deposit could pollute Bristol Bay.
Last week, Northern Dynasty said $107 million had been committed to ready the project for environmental permitting.
Thiessen said the biggest challenge with Pebble isn't the environmental issues, but Northern Dynasty's partnership with mining giant Anglo American PLC.
Northern Dynasty is a much smaller and less well-known company than Anglo, which means it will be challenged to come up with the resources to take the massive project into production along with Anglo.
"We are the project's Achilles heel even though we're the guys that took something that everybody else said was nothing and created the asset's value."
But in spite of all the years of long hours, hard work, controversy and success, Thiessen has no plans to retire any time soon.
In fact, he said his job isn't really work at all; it's a hobby that he happens to have a knack for and gets paid to do.
"They're going to have to take me out of here in a pine box." •
