Welcome to the first edition of The ASIA Miner weekly electronic news service. I can tell you that as the editor of both The ASIA Miner magazine and now launching a weekly electronic news service, I feel that my fingers are going to fuse to the keyboard.

So any industrial chemists and chemical engineers among our readership who have invented a solvent to stop this occurring in the future are most welcome to contact me.

Well, that was just to let you know, that we do have a sense of humour at The ASIA Miner. This news service is the culmination of 18 months of sheer drive and determination by two women Kim Cox and myself Yolanda Torrisi, who have had a long history and involvement in publishing for the mining industry. In hindsight, I think we did everything back to front. The initial contact between we two budding entrepreneurs, was by phone from our respective offices at two opposite ends of Australia, discussing the idea of setting up a bilingual mining and resources magazine dedicated to the Asia Pacific region, soon afterwards we took a giant leap of faith and went into partnership and some months later finally met face to face at China Mining 2004 - the launch of The ASIA Miner magazine - and let me say, for all those that don't know that doing business in China can have giant heartaches - we were victims of some stressful days in China leading up to our magazine launch there in November 2004.

Funnily enough, when I hear the stories of how some junior exploration and mining companies came into being, I feel the same adventurous spirit and determination, we've had, has been the underpinning story of the many successes they are enjoying today.

For The ASIA Miner , 18 months since that first magazine was published, the launch of our first weekly electronic news service has been a much smoother process - not without some hugely long hours, may I add and more coffee than I care to admit to. This is where I reveal that it is 2.50am and I have a deadline to meet by 9am and am writing this introductory piece to let you know we want you to enjoy a smile on our behalf before you launch into your weekly news.

Well it's not all laments really … for two entrepreneurial shielas, it's been an amazing adventure and we wouldn't have done anything else really … well maybe done a few things differently, than we did, along the way. We hope you will share the enthusiasm we have for our weekly electronic news service and find the news we bring you each week both informative and keep you looking forward to the next week's instalment as well as reading the quarterly The ASIA Miner magazine that brings you news features about the Asia Pacific's new exploration projects and mine developments.

Please feel welcome to drop us a line anytime about your news or if there is something you want more of, less of, like or dislike. I welcome all your comments.

Happy reading

Yolanda Torrisi

Editor

The ASIA Miner magazine and weekly electronic news service.