The latest chance for Gindalbie to go from rags to riches lies with the advanced wholly-owned Minjar project, 350km north-north-east of Perth in Western Australia’s South Murchison district.
Perth-based Gindalbie has started a bankable feasibility study to determine optimum economic and metallurgical parameters of a proposed development, and is hoping initial positive feedback from banking groups will lead to a fully debt-funded, standalone, mid-sized gold mine getting underway by early next year.
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Gindalbie Gold's managing director, David McSweeney: "Minjar had the potential to provide quick cashflow at a low capital cost. Anketell was great, but the partners had spent about $2 million on it and it was still only an exciting prospect; there was no resource."
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Gindalbie began its corporate life as a Kalgoorlie-Boulder-based explorer and listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in April 1994 after raising $4.2 million. Early riches came in the form of the Two Boys gold mine about 150km south of Kalgoorlie, which operated between January 1997 and June 1998. The project generated revenue of $36.64 million in its short life and delivered Gindalbie a healthy surplus of almost $7 million.
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With the Two Boys ore exhausted, Gindalbie once again turned its attention to exploration and teamed up with Croesus Mining on the exciting Anketell project, 100km north of the giant Telfer mine in WA’s Great Sandy Desert.
Anketell had all the hallmarks of a promising project and was shaping up as Gindalbie’s next flagship. That was until the company snared Minjar late last year.
Gindalbie’s managing director, David McSweeney, said the sudden change in direction, although seemingly drastic, was actually very simple.
“Minjar had the potential to provide quick cashflow at a low capital cost,” he said. “Anketell was great, but the partners had spent about $2 million on it and it was still only an exciting prospect; there was no resource.”
That project has now been offloaded, but Gindalbie retains enough interest to benefit from any upside. Anketell was sold to fellow junior Metex Resources for $1.3 million in cash and 14 million shares in a new public company, with tax effective advantages, which will own the project.
Gindalbie bought the Minjar project from Normandy Mining for $2.5 million and for its money got estimated resources of 385,000oz and more than 600sq.km of ground.
The resource has since been upgraded to 440,000oz through pre-feasibility drilling and has set Gindalbie firmly on a development course.
McSweeney describes Minjar as an “80s-style” planned gold development. By that he means three to four open pits, each one 200,000-500,000 tonnes, oxide ore, decent grade and a modest 500,000 tonnes per annum treatment plant.
“If this was in the [Eastern] Goldfields it would have been mined out years ago,” he says of the virgin gold mining centre. The only mining of any significance in the area is Normandy’s nearby Golden Grove zinc mine.
