Gibb River Diamonds looks to cash in on gold at Edjudina
Gibb River told the Australian Securities Exchange on Wednesday the focus would be on realising the commercial potential of the Neta deposit.
The company said Neta had a mineral resource estimate of 378,000 tonnes at 1.9g per tonne for 24,000 ounces of gold, with 110,000t at 2.2g/t for 8000oz in the indicated category.
Gibb River said BML would be responsible for all mining-related capital and working capital costs, with Gibb River providing no capital for the project.
'BML's role is to cover all aspects of mining and deliver the mineralised material to one of a number of nearby gold processing plants,' Gibb River said.
'Once project expenses have been paid, with costs being reimbursed from operational cash flow, the net surplus cash will be split 50:50 between (Gibb River) and BML.'
The companies are working together to obtain remaining approvals, and aiming to start mining this year — potentially as early as August.
Gibb River said processing arrangements still needed to be established with one of the third-party processing plants in the region.
'There are no forward sales locked in for this mining operation and all production will be sold into the spot gold market,' Gibb River said.
Gibb River acquired Edjudina in a cash-and-scrip deal in 2020, and at the time said historic production figures for the entire Edjudina field up to 1921 were 39,476oz at 41.0g/t.
The company also has the Ellendale diamond project in the Kimberley, and in its most recent quarterly report said it was seeking a strategic partner to progress the project, with the ultimate aim being to re-establish diamond production at the site.
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West Australian
5 days ago
- West Australian
Resource boost puts Venus on path to WA goldfields production
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News.com.au
6 days ago
- News.com.au
Rare earths are finally a household name
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'We're seeing that with government. We're seeing it with the magnet producers. We're seeing that with the end markets. 'And the end markets are the car manufacturers, the robotics manufacturers, the defence industries, and they are realising that they are unacceptably vulnerable to supply chain disruption, and they need to have some redundancy in their supply chain, so it's really sped up the discussions.' Hitting the mainstream Rare earths burst into the mainstream media at the start of the year when US President Donald Trump announced plans to purchase Greenland, partially to access its mineral endowment. Trump also signed an executive order which pledged to make the US 'the leading producer and processor of non-fuel minerals, including rare earth minerals', which sparked retaliatory export controls by China. In late April, the US signed a deal with Ukraine that would give the US access to Ukraine's mineral resources in exchange for establishing an investment fund to rebuild Ukraine. At the G7 meeting in June, rare earths was also a major agenda item, with the seven countries involved in the group establishing a Critical Minerals Action Plan. On Sunday night, Australia's 60 Minutes program ran a piece on Energy Transition Minerals' Kvanefjeld rare earths project after sending a crew and reporter to Greenland, helping to spark a run up in its share price ahead of a retraction from the company about statements around the in-ground vale of its resource. Just yesterday, the BBC ran a piece based on a visit to Iluka Resources' government-backed Eneabba rare earths refinery in Western Australia. All this attention has not gone unnoticed by junior companies previously confined to the margins. Victory Metals managing director Brendan Clark told Stockhead that rare earths' day in the sun had been a long time coming. 'I've lived and breathed this for quite a few years now, so I kind of knew it was inevitable,' he said. 'I don't think there's been any commodity before that has … received as much attention from government, where they're willing to, like Iluka, fund up to $1.8 billion in some way or form to develop these projects. 'If you're a base metals project, you've got to go out there and find the money yourself. 'These rare earth projects, you're just getting money thrown at you from multiple governments and multiple sources, so it's actually a whole different ballpark and the promotion is certainly getting a lot easier than when I started out a few years ago.' More than a US story While the US' moves have been a big focus, including its deal to take equity in domestic producer MP Materials, rare earths leaders say the interest is coming from everywhere. 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'I think we're seeing everybody moving at the moment. Some are moving faster than others, and I think the challenge for Australia will be keeping pace.' Heavy interest Clark says the key differentiator for Victory was North Stanmore's heavy rare earths. On Monday, Victory updated the resource estimate for North Stanmore, reporting heavy rare earth oxide to total rare earth oxide ratios of up to 83%, which Clark described as 'unheard of'. 'There's no one else in Australia that's publicly listed, or in the world, that has the same scale as us in a clay system with the same ratios of heavy earths,' he said. He said the prices for heavy rare earths outside of China were finally moving. 'Things like yttrium, that was the ugly duckling and I think the least valuable heavy earth at about US$7 or US$8 a kilogram, you're starting to see some non-Chinese prices now for yttrium at US$50 a kilogram,' Clark said. 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ABC News
6 days ago
- ABC News
Women in mining say industry missing out on female leadership talent
At this year's Diggers and Dealers conference, about 2,500 mining delegates touched down in WA's gold city of Kalgoorlie to hear from the very top of the industry. But of the more than 40 directors, chief executives, and chairs who took to the panel stage, only one was a woman. Chief executive and managing director of Australian Strategic Materials (ASM) Rowena Smith said she was "very pleased" to have been invited to speak. "I spent an enormous amount of time in the audience in the early years, and I didn't see any women on the stage," she said. Ms Smith said the increase in women at the event was positive. "Twenty years ago … there were [also] very few women in the audience," she said. "As I stood there on the stage on Monday, I was looking out into so many women's faces." The 2025 Global Gender Gap Report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) shows the number of top-level management positions held by women in the oil, gas and mining industry is only around 16 per cent. It is a fact author and gold expert Sandra Close knows all too well. She was the first woman geologist in the field in Australia at a time when the industry looked very different. "[When] I started, it was zero women with hands-on jobs in the mining industry," Dr Close said. "It was quite a lot to break through." She moved from geology to high-level resource financing, later becoming the senior executive at a multinational resources group. But despite her accolades, including a nomination for Senior Australian of the Year, there is one part of the industry Dr Close never entered. According the WEF, in 2024, only about 14 per cent of new hires to top leadership positions in the oil, gas and mining industry were women. It is part of a steady global decline in women being hired to top-level management roles since the pandemic. Journalist and equality advocate Catherine Fox said it was "just not good enough." "The number of women at the decision-making table is … sadly either plateauing or going backwards," she said. Ms Fox said she thought US President Donald Trump's dismantling of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) laws in the US was starting to spread to Australia. She believes changes are already happening "under the surface". "I think that backlash that women [have] already gone far enough, in fact we might have gone too far, is gathering pace," she said. "We fought for years to get the word 'diversity' taken seriously, now people are changing it to things like 'productivity.'" Ms Smith said it was important the industry encouraged more women into leadership roles. "One of the things that will encourage that is men seeing women do the job … seeing is believing," Ms Smith said. She also said the industry needed to stop holding women to a higher standard than men. "We're perceived to be a higher risk candidate, and therefore the benchmark seems to go up," she said. "I don't think men have the same need [as women] to be exceptional." Dr Close said the mining industry could not afford to continue excluding women like herself from top roles. "When you'd have the sort of experience that I've had … I think it would have been fascinating," Dr Close said.
