COMPANY NEWS

• Launches  Aspermont's dedicated research business, leveraging off 185 years of industry expertise with Mining Journal, the world's most-respected title in the mining sector
• After 18 months of research and production, Aspermont launches the Mining Journal World Risk Report (WRR), the definite assessment of risks for the global mining industry
• Continues execution of Aspermont's accelerated growth strategy to leverage industry intelligence and digital distribution capabilities to build high quality, recurring revenues

Aspermont (ASX:ASP) is pleased to announce publication of the Mining Journal World Risk Report (feat.MineHutte ratings).This marks a culmination of over 18 month's work from concept through development to delivery. We see this as the natural evolution of the ResourceStocks World Risk Survey - launched some 25 years ago - into a sophisticated product as part of the Mining Journal brand.

The World Risk Report (WRR) includes our Investment Risk Index, which is a robust system for rating individual jurisdictions across multiple metrics to cover the Legal, Governance, Social, Fiscal and Infrastructure risk baskets. The WRR is weighted toward hard, established risk-related indices but also includes perceived risk, as per the findings of a refocused World Risk Survey (weighting: 80/20). As our ratings methodology is based on hard numbers, our ratings are more resilient against the manipulation, bias and shorter term volatility that affect survey-driven systems.

The Investment Risk Index comprises over 3,600 aggregated data points across 85 jurisdictions. Some 17,000 words of analysis and discussion, and almost 5,000 words of thought leadership script have been compiled around that data. The General Risk section of the greater report covers geographically indiscriminate Business and Operating risks to deliver a set of unique data with some 7,000 words of commentary.

Chris Cann, Head of Aspermont Research & Intelligence commented:-

"The overwhelming conclusion from this research is that North America, and specifically Canada, is the safest place to invest capital in the natural resource sectors.

Five of the AAA-rated (negligible risk) jurisdictions are provinces of Canada, and six are North American. Only two of Canada's 18 provinces and of the US 51 states failed to register an A-rating (low risk) or above. The other regions usually associated with low-risk mineral investments - Northern Europe and Australia - also produced multiple A-plus jurisdictions. The poorer ratings are all African and Asian jurisdictions. 

The research also provides insight into the relative risk tolerance of mining professionals as measured against risk on an absolute basis. The three top-ranked geographies on a regional basis - Canada, the US and Australia/Oceania - all register lower risk scores within the World Risk Survey than they do from the hard risk metrics. Conversely, the lowest-placed region, Africa, scored materially better in the World Risk Survey than as measured by the hard metrics.

This suggests to us that the higher expectations apparent in known, stable mining strongholds underpin an unavoidable bias within respondents from those jurisdictions, when they provide ratings on a relative basis. Similarly, expectations on establishing an operation in Africa are generally low and so relatively trouble-free experiences are rewarded with disproportionately high ratings."

Mining Journal subscribers can access the full findings, analysis and discussion for each of the individual risk baskets as well as the General Risk section within the 128 page full report, while non-subscribers are encouraged to download the Executive Summary version, which presents the headline findings www.mining-journal.com/mining-journal-world-risk-report-2017/ 

Aspermont managing director Alex Kent commented:-

"The Mining Journal World Risk Report (feat.MineHutte ratings) is the ideal product for us to launch Aspermont's dedicated research business. 

Chris Cann has championed our commitment to analyse mining risks and our Aspermont Research & Intelligence will provide unique products important for the industry to which we are deeply committed.

Our research is released appropriately under the banner of Mining Journal - which for 185 years has been the world's most-respected title in the mining sector. We intend to publish addititment and leadership - areas of critical importance for the mining sector as identified by our growing in-house team of mining specialists."

For further information, please contact:

Chris Cann 

Head of Aspermont Research & Intelligence

Alex Kent
Aspermont Group Managing Director

+44 (0) 7791 559 439