Kalgoorlie says goodbye, and emotions are running high. Pic: Getty Images
- Duncan Gibbs gives tearful farewell as Gold Road boss warns of exploration decline
- Benz and Waratah turn heads, Gorilla marketing and Pantoro’s bull
- Who won the Diggers and Dealers Awards?
Gold Road Resources (ASX:GOR) managing director Duncan Gibbs has delivered a parting swipe at roadblocks halting major mining discoveries in WA as he bid an emotional farewell to the company’s historic journey ahead of its $3.7bn takeover by Gold Fields.
A 3c stock before the discovery of the now 300,000ozpa+ Gruyere gold mine in WA, the company surged more than 100 times over as it built the 50-50 JV in WA’s previously uncharted Yamarna Belt and caught the tailwinds of the recent gold boom.
Run on the smell of an oily rag, Gold Road once sold cows from the Yamarna pastoral station to fund drilling at the discovery, 200km east of Laverton, made at a time when gold prices had crashed to ~$1400/oz and with sentiment in the gold sector close to an all-time low.
Twelve years on and gold is now paying more than $5000/oz, driving historically strong cash flows across the industry.
But a tearful Gibbs, who played a role in two of the other major WA gold discoveries of the past 30 years as the head of AngloGold’s exploration division at Sunrise Dam and Tropicana, warned red tape was hurting the industry’s ability to find another mine like Gold Road and Gold Fields’ big slice of outback cheese.
“Exploration is getting harder,” he said late on the final day of Kalgoorlie’s Diggers and Dealers conference.
“Part of it is the maturity of exploration, the stuff that’s sticking out the surface (has been found).
“We then had a whole sequence of discoveries that were really made by just blitzing and finding surface sampling, soils or what have you and they found a whole wave of discoveries. We’re now looking in belts like Tropicana, which were regarded as the wrong geology – I kind of put Hemi in that wave.
“Or they’re under cover like Havieron.
“The other thing that is massively more complicated is the whole heritage, native title access, environmental stuff. And unless, I think, there’s some creative, innovative solutions to changing that current model, the industry is in a downward decline.
“And to the detriment of the industry and remote communities – and that includes Aboriginal people.”
Gibbs, who also claims former mentees among the exploration teams that found the world-class Hemi and Havieron discoveries, said the Gold Road story provided hope for struggling juniors in the marquee at the time-honoured Kalgoorlie gabfest. But he also said exploration and administration costs, land access issues, and the approach to capitalising the junior exploration sector needed to change.
“I think capital markets have become quite short-n term thinking.
“The biggest fundamental value that you can create in the industry is finding another (mine).
“If you look at it from a wealth creation and Australian economy point of view, we’ve got to do something about the state of exploration. It’s not as simple as just throwing more money at it. We actually need to sort out some of the land access issues that we’ve now created, particularly in Western Australia.”
Talk of the town
A couple of juniors did emerge as bolters at the conference, with numerous punters who spoke to Stockhead looking closely at NSW copper and gold explorer Waratah Minerals (ASX:WTM) and WA gold explorer Benz Mining Corp (ASX:BNZ).
Waratah surged 21.7% on no news on the final day of the event, having stunned the market with an intercept of 208.7m at 1.17g/t Au from 514m at the Spur Gold Corridor on Monday.
Drilling returned multiple zones of visible gold at the Consols prospect, boosting Waratah’s strike at Spur to over 1.5km near Newmont’s world class Cadia gold and copper mine.
MD Peter Duerden secured a fill-in speaking slot on Monday and it was very well-timed, with the stock now up 96% over the past week.
“You can start to get a sense of the continuity of mineralisation here,” Duerden said. “It’s a real pivotal hole for us and for the gold endowment of the Spur Gold Corridor.”
Benz Mining’s CEO Mark Lynch-Staunton drew comparisons for its Glenburgh gold project – acquired from the tent of Spartan Resources (ASX:SPR) as its head was turned to its amazing Never Never discovery at Dalgaranga – to the 500,000ozpa Tropicana gold mine.
“If I’m going to make a prediction in 12 months’ time this is not going to look like this, it’s going to look very different,” he said late on Wednesday.
“If you missed out on Hemi and you missed out on Gruyere, I truly believe this will be the next multi-million ounce gold district.”
Fighting words indeed.
Benz shares have run 14.3% higher in the past week.
Gorilla marketing
Also running hot has been Gorilla Gold Mines (ASX:GG8), the owner of the Comet Vale and Vivien projects in the Goldfields.
Up 18%, GG8 fed its investors a fattening diet of promotional activities throughout Diggers and Dealers, including a site visit and investor breakfast.
But it was the company’s, quite literal, gorilla marketing that really turned heads. Spartan’s ‘chariots’ (really rickshaws) were still doing the rounds despite its $2bn plus takeover by the more reserved Ramelius Resources (ASX:RMS).
Stablemate Gorilla, which includes Spartan’s Simon Lawson on its board, also went literal with a lady in a gorilla suit the hottest model on the Diggers catwalk.
We have it on good authority the actor’s pay packet included a $30/hr rate with two cartons of bushchooks thrown in as performance rights (Emu Export, the driller’s drink of choice, for you blank-faced othersiders).
Naming conventions at the explorer’s growing prospect list are also getting enterprising. Harambe is reportedly one of them.
Taking inspiration from Planet of the Apes, we’ve suggested Caesar has real potential as a target. And we look forward to riding down a future decline named after fictional Korean baseball prodigy Mr Go.
Charles Hughes turned heads by presenting on Tuesday in hi-vis, having just bolted down from site.
No match for $1.6bn gold miner Pantoro (ASX:PNR), whose boss Paul Cmrlec gave investors a tour down memory lane with previous Diggers slides from the Norseman gold mine owner dating back to its acquisition of the Halls Creek project in 2014 as a $15m explorer.
It included a CGI render of a bull sh**ting gold bars. The space between those two words is an important distinction, investors in Pantoro will hope, after the long-struggling miner stashed away $43.3m of cash and gold in the June quarter.
And the wiener is…
All eyes turned to the Diggers and Dealers gala dinner on Wednesday night, which featured the forum’s all important awards.
Digger of the Year was claimed for a momentous second time by Ramelius Resources (ASX:RMS) after its previous success in 2020.
The Mt Magnet miner, which recently closed its acquisition of neighbour Spartan, pulled in an incredible $694.9m of free cash on a record 301,664oz of gold production in FY25.
It’s the first two time winner of the prize.
Dealer of the Year went to De Grey Mining after the Hemi gold mine discovery culminated in its ~$6bn takeover by Australia’s largest gold miner Northern Star Resources (ASX:NST).
It breaks a curse for Best Emerging Company award winners, previously known as a poison chalice.
This year’s winner of that prize came from left field, with Cote d’Ivoire explorer Turaco Gold (ASX:TCG) claiming BEC honours for its Afema gold project.
Justin Tremain’s $520m firm picked up Afema in early 2024. As of May it had 3.55Moz in gold resources, with the junior sitting on a 725% five year gain and $520m market cap on Wednesday.
Westgold Resources and Metals X founder Peter Cook, whose cover band held court at Kalgoorlie’s Gold Bar for two straight nights, won the GJ Stokes Award for lifetime achievement in the mining industry, reflecting over 30 years as a leading executive in the WA mining industry.
He follows his old chairman Peter ‘Talky’ Newton, the 2005 winner of the award, into the Diggers equivalent of the hall of fame.
The media award went to Paydirt’s Michael Washbourne while Mason Calter won the Ray Finlayson Award, which goes to a high performing student at the local Kalgoorlie campus of the WA School of Mines.
This is Josh Chiat signing off from Hannan Street. Time for a drink.
At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Waratah Minerals is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article.