Roger Kauffman New Hecla Chief Operating Officer Returns To Company With Bullish Outlook

After a two-year professional tangent that took him to different corners of the world, Roger Kauffman is back at Hecla Mining Co.

He returns to a company facing challenges that the Hecla he left could not have foreseen. As the first chief operating officer for the 105-year-old silver and gold producer, Kauffman will have his hands in all of them.

“I think we’re in an upswing period,” Kauffman said in Hecla’s well-appointed headquarters. “In this business, you can’t just sweep your doorstep clean in a fortnight.”

Hecla’s recent misfortunes include the Grouse Creek Mine in central Idaho, an expensive flop, and the write-off of the company’s investment in the American Girl mine in California. Both gold mines together cost Hecla more than $100 million in losses. Hecla’s stock continues to trade near lows of the decade.

Intrigued by rocks in his youth, Kauffman’s experience tells him that the fortunes of mining companies can change quickly, both for the worse and for the better.

Hecla looks to a stable of mines to resuscitate the company’s earnings: Greens Creek in Alaska, Rosebud in Nevada and the promising expansion of the Lucky Friday silver mine in Mullan.

Kauffman left Hecla to be the vice president and later president of Amax Gold Corp. in 1994 to broaden his management experience. The move to Denver gave him the chance to oversee mines as far away as Siberia and South America, where many mining companies are turning for new prospects.

“It was a very hard decision to make,” said Kauffman, a vice president of Hecla’s successful industrial minerals division before leaving. “But I left Hecla on good terms and continued to have ongoing discussions with them.”

Those discussions, combined with a change in management direction for Amax Gold, brought Kauffman back in Coeur d’Alene. It also puts him next in line behind Art Brown, Hecla’s president, chief executive and chairman of the board, to run the company.

The plan, contrary to rumors, is not for Kauffman to assume Brown’s job.

“Art’s going to be here until he retires,” said Vicki Veltkamp, manager of corporate communications. “He’s not going anywhere.”

The development of Hecla’s long-term succession planning, where Kauffman now plays a big role, helped make the decision to return easier, he said.

The job puts Kauffman deep into Hecla’s nuts and bolts: exploration, development and mine operations.

Kauffman built his management career to season himself in all disciplines. He worked at Exxon for six years after serving in the Navy and getting a degree from New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. The big oil company began to branch out into metals exploration, and Kauffman helped engineer those mines from Houston.

Kauffman next moved to a small but fast-growing exploration company before joining Hecla in 1984. His new job lays out a new set of surprises each day and allows him to meet a myriad of new people. That variety is why Kauffman sticks with the industry.

Other rumors that Hecla might be a takeover target for giant Santa Fe Pacific Gold Corp. don’t concern Kauffman, who said those kinds of rumors will always swirl around in an industry as cozy as mining.

Santa Fe Pacific has a joint venture agreement to look for more gold at Hecla’s Republic mining site in northeastern Washington, where Hecla shut down its gold mine in early 1995.

Santa Fe Pacific also signed a deal this week with Hecla to process the ore from Hecla’s Rosebud mine in Nevada in exchange for half the gold from the new mine. The Albuquerque-based company is substantially larger than Hecla, which as been selling off its non-mining assets such as the land holdings around its headquarters, which some see as a prelude to a takeover.

Kauffman, 52, said his family - including two children - made the readjustment back to North Idaho rather well. In his spare time, Kauffman is a golfer, a skier and an avid reader.

“When we came back, it wasn’t just a ‘welcome back’ we heard from the people here,” Kauffman said. “It was ‘welcome home.”’

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo