Latest news with #TimGoyder
ABC News
25-05-2025
- Business
- ABC News
Critical minerals take back seat in WA as gold hits record prices
In Australia's resources sector, Tim Goyder has been the man with the Midas touch in recent years. At one point in 2023, his stock holdings in one-time market darlings Liontown Resources and Chalice Mining saw him become a paper billionaire with an estimated net worth of $1.09 billion. But as fast as the Perth-based mining investor joined the Australian Financial Review's annual Rich List, such is the swings and roundabouts of commodity price cycles, he slipped off. That is not to say Mr Goyder has lost his golden touch, but his personal fortune reflects the downturn in critical minerals such as lithium and nickel. "Two years ago, everyone was saying lithium was the thing to be in, which I still believe," he said. Mr Goyder and his various investment arms control more than 333 million shares in Western Australia's newest lithium miner, Liontown Resources, worth $211.8 million at Friday's closing price of 63.5 cents. The company's $951 million Kathleen Valley lithium mine in WA's northern Goldfields shipped its first concentrate from Geraldton Port last September, supplying US electric vehicle manufacturers Ford and Tesla and South Korean battery maker LG Energy Solutions. The development of the long-life Kathleen Valley mine saw Liontown trade as high as $3.15 in June 2023, as US chemicals giant Albermarle circled with a $6.6 billion takeover bid before walking away during the due diligence process. Lithium's dramatic slump was underlined this month when Liontown received a state government support package in the form of waivers on port charges and tenement fees, as well as a $15 million interest-free loan until prices recover. "It's gratefully received from the WA government," Mr Goyder said. "They recognise it is an early mover industry, and every bit helps while lithium prices are low, but long term I think we've got a very, very good business." Another former market darling of Mr Goyder's is Chalice Mining, which has slowed development work for its Gonneville palladium-nickel-copper project near Toodyay in WA's Wheatbelt. His 7.8 per cent stake was worth $37.5 million at Friday's $1.23 market close, down from a record $9.86 in November 2021. In the meantime, Mr Goyder has turned his attention to gold as the precious metal soared above $5,000 an ounce in Australian dollar terms for the first time this year. As chairman of fledgling gold miner Minerals 260, and a 7.3 per cent major shareholder, he played a key role in January's $166.5 million acquisition of the Bullabulling project from Chinese-owned miner Norton Gold Fields. "We don't have buyer's remorse," Mr Goyder said. "After paying $72 an ounce, and given the gold price has risen almost $700 an ounce since we announced the deal, we don't have buyer's remorse." The Bullabulling mine, 65 kilometres south-west of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, closed in 1998 when the gold price was about $500 an ounce. Geologists have pored over old drilling data and estimate at least 2.3 million ounces of gold remains at Bullabulling, where Mr Goyder believes a mine employing 350 workers could be operational by 2028. "There's nothing better than seeing a development go ahead, jobs created, and wealth created for our shareholders," he said. Minerals 260's ASX ticker is MI6, and as one geologist pointed out during a recent field trip, they have been given a "licence to drill". Four drill rigs, and soon to be six, are turning as part of an 80,000-metre exploration campaign to find more pay dirt. "There is upside here there's no doubt, that's why we bought it," Mr Goyder said. "I'm sure once we go through all the studies, the economics are going to look very good." It is a familiar story across WA with old mines being dusted off like old newspapers amid this year's record gold prices. Among them is the Youanmi mine, about 400km east of Geraldton, which operated from 1987 to 1997 but closed when the gold price was about $450 an ounce. Perth-based Rox Resources has estimated it would cost $245 million to bring it into production. Rox has told the ASX it will complete a definitive feasibility study by the end of the year with the aim of entering production by mid-2027. At nearby Sandstone in the Mid West, WA gold miner Brightstar Resources has taken the first steps to revive mining, which ceased in 2010. The company is currently undertaking an 80,000-metre drilling campaign at Sandstone, with plans to restart production in 2028. It is funding those works by selling ore to processing plants surrounding its gold deposits at Laverton and Menzies in the northern Goldfields, a practice known as toll milling. Gold's current hot streak has seen even low-grade material become valuable again, highlighted this week at the Mt Fisher mine, a small open pit last mined in 1987 about 120km east of Wiluna. Old stockpiles, up to 195,000 tonnes of low-grade ore, that have sat at Mt Fisher for 38 years, are undergoing test work for a potential toll milling deal. "There's lots of ups and downs in the market … but the gold price has gone up exponentially in just two years," Mr Goyder said. "It's a great spot to be right now."
News.com.au
12-05-2025
- Business
- News.com.au
Timing is Everything: Gold price reignites historic Bullabulling mine for Tim Goyder's Minerals 260
Gold prices have surged this year, sparking M&A and fast-tracking new developments in Australia Tim Goyder's Minerals 260 is looking to revive the 2.3Moz Bullabulling gold mine 80,000m drill program has started ahead of resource upgrade and PFS ASX mining's Midas character Tim Goyder says we are in the best market for new gold developments in "70 to 80 years" after pulling off an "audacious" deal that could create WA's next mid-tier gold producer. One of five ASX vehicles where the money man behind Liontown Resources (ASX:LTR) and Chalice Mining (ASX:CHN) has made his fortune, Minerals 260 (ASX:MI6) has begun an 80,000m drill campaign to improve its confidence in the 2.3Moz Bullabulling gold project ahead of modern project studies. The mine west of the historic Goldfields town of Coolgardie – where gold was first discovered in 1892 – has famously missed a string of gold booms, after being folded into the global portfolio of $100bn Chinese gold, copper and lithium giant Zijin Mining. Previously an unheralded junior explorer, minnow MI6 wrapped up one of the deals of the year in January 1, beating out larger players with a $165 million deal to acquire the mine. The catch? MI6 was worth just $30m at the time. It would take close to three months to lock up the $220m of fresh capital needed to get the deal across the line. In the interceding period, Donald Trump's tariff policy sent investors flocking for safe haven, pushing gold to record highs. A major backdown from both the US and China on the scale of their reciprocal tariffs (from 145% and 125% to 30% and 10% respectively) sent bullion over US$100 down last night to a touch over US$3200/oz. That's still 28% higher over the past six months, with handy exchange rates seeing Aussie dollar gold lifting a remarkable $700/oz since the deal was announced. "Clearly this is the most exciting period for gold for the last 70 or 80 years, so I'd say the way it's gone. It's risen since we've done the deal about $700 an ounce in a matter of three months," Goyder said at Coolgardie's iconic Denver City Hotel yesterday. "So it is exciting. And the world has shifted. The central banks around the world are buying gold and that says something about the economy, doesn't it?" The upside Minerals 260 is chaired by Goyder, the firm's second largest shareholder with a 7.26% stake, and led by managing director Luke McFadyen, whose impressive resume includes four years as head of portfolio strategy and economics at OZ Minerals, a role which culminated with the copper miner's $9.6bn sale to BHP. This time on the other side of the deal, he saw the value latent in an unloved asset that didn't meet the investment hurdles and technical properties Zijin favoured. Studied as a heap leach, MI6 will pursue a conventional heap leach for the project, which has a resource running 60Mt at 1.2g/t for 2.3Moz. Around 55,000m of the drilling, currently being conducted via three RC rigs and one diamond, will consist of infill drilling to improve the confidence level of the resource, largely at the key Bacchus deposit. It's one of four bulk, low grade open pits along an 8.5km strike trending north to south across the tenement package. Another smaller pit, Gibraltar, runs east to west on the other side of the property, but is surrounded by potentially mineralised ground yet to be tested. Located 65km from Australia's gold capital of Kalgoorlie, Resolute Mining (ASX:RSG) mined out the oxide resources in the late 1990s to a depth of around 70m at Bullabulling when gold was fetching just $500/oz. Modern resources have been cut at a gold price of just $3000/oz Aussie and the deepest point of the resource is just 250m underground. Holes in the current program will extend as far as 500m deep. Aside from the raging gold price, that attention to detail is partly why McFadyen thinks MI6 can do what Zijin couldn't. "I think it sat in the wrong company. It's a $100 billion Chinese company that don't do exploration. And very similar to my experience in buying other projects from other big companies, they just ... don't see it how we see it," McFadyen said. " So to the cynics, we'll wait to prove you wrong and we look forward to it. "Ultimately, this has got 530,000m of drilling in it, so you can't fake that. Some of these drill holes are 20m by 20m. So it's been extensively understood, it's had multiple resource updates. "And so we're pleased to be able to prove these people wrong in the future." How big could it be? MI6 was capped at $270m on Monday, but exploration and study success could well move it into another strata of Aussie gold plays. McFadyen thinks it could become a regional play, with the development of the Bullabulling project to open up small satellite prospects that could be held on nearby tenements. An early sighter of that strategy came last week via an option deal over tenements to the north of Bullabulling owned by Argentine copper explorer Belararox (ASX:BRX), expanding its territory to 570km2. Analysts and brokers are already beginning to map out the long-term future for the project in a buoyant gold environment. Argonaut thinks a 5Mtpa open pit could produce a "base case" 140,000ozpa. Goyder told reporters the aim would be to become a company producing 'in the order of' 150,000oz a year. With a resource upgrade due in December, McFadyen noted it would be up to the pre-feasibility study results to show how big the mine – on a timeline to enter production in H2 2028 – would be. But he said Bullabulling was the "foundation of a fantastic company". "If you look at similar sized resources and what they produce, you've got a substantial production profile, both in annual production as well as length of production," he said. "This is a big project, you don't often see 2-plus million ounces one hour's drive away from Kalgoorlie Airport." New breed Euroz Hartleys analyst Michael Scantlebury said the rise in the gold price this year had the potential to underpin a new generation of gold developers. It comes with the large end of town cashing in. Euroz's quarterly gold review showed free cash flow generation across ASX gold miners bounded beyond $1bn for the first time in the March quarter. "You're seeing a lot of those once marginal producers generating strong cash flows, proving that this next round of developers really can make solid margins at today's pricing," he said. " As much as people ... may think that these assets have been tried and tested before, a lot of them, especially with MI6, are coming out of larger companies that just didn't make sense for them to spend the capital. "I think that at today's pricing you're going to see these developers actually come online and be successful." While the gold price is "anyone's guess", Scantlebury says easing inflation is on the side of the developers as well. M&A is also expected to continue. "I think the amount of cash that some of these these (miners) are putting on (means M&A will continue)," Scantlebury said. "Ramelius was adding $256 million bucks in a single quarter in underlying free cash flow. "When you're doing quarters like that, you can go and buy some of these juniors with one quarter of free cash flow and pick up a couple of these kind of small developers to, especially if you've got infrastructure already in place." Among the potential takeover targets in the developer space, Scantlebury says Magnetic Resources (ASX:MAU) could be a target for Laverton gold district neighbour Genesis Minerals (ASX:GMD). He also thinks Ramelius Resources (ASX:RMS), currently executing a merger with Spartan Resources (ASX:SPR), could look to mop up projects around its pre-development Rebecca/Roe site. Meanwhile, Scantlebury says Antipa Minerals (ASX:AZY) is a "screaming takeover target" for Greatland Gold, Scantlebury says. Its 2.8Moz Minyari Dome project sits in the neighbourhood of Greatland's Telfer plant, acquired for US$475m from Newmont last year and expected to be underfed when its primary ore feed switches to the underground Havieron deposit.
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Minerals 260 completes $220m capital raise for Bullabulling gold development in Australia
Minerals 260 has raised capital before costs of $220m for the acquisition and development of the Bullabulling Gold Project in Western Australia (WA). The Bullabulling Gold Project is situated 25km south-west of Coolgardie in WA's Eastern Goldfields region. The capital was raised by offering 1.83 billion new shares at $0.12 each, marking the maximum subscription amount allowed under the public offer. The offering drew strong interest from institutional funds across Asia, North America and Europe, as well as support from domestic institutions and existing shareholders. The capital raise was backed by new and existing investors. Directors and key management participated, contributing $12.7m, with chairman Tim Goyder and his nominees investing $12m. The funds will cover the $156.4m cash component of acquiring the Bullabulling Gold Project from Norton Gold Fields, a Zijin Mining subsidiary. The deal related to the acquisition was signed in January 2025. Minerals 260 chairman Tim Goyder said: 'The successful completion of this capital raising is a significant achievement for the company. The raising was strongly supported by both global and domestic institutions and our existing shareholders. 'Minerals 260 is now in a position to complete the acquisition of the Bullabulling Gold Project, re-commence trading on the ASX [Australian Securities Exchange] and begin our aggressive drilling campaign. We look forward to updating the market regularly about our progress at the project, including the commencement of drilling, soon.' The Bullabulling Gold Project has a JORC 2012 mineral resource estimate of 60 million tonnes (mt) at 1.2 grams per tonne of gold, translating to 2.3 million ounces of gold across granted mining leases within a 293km² tenement package. The project presents considerable exploration potential, with several highly prospective targets identified at depth and along strike. Minerals 260 plans to focus on exploration drilling to expand the mineral resource further. "Minerals 260 completes $220m capital raise for Bullabulling gold development in Australia" was originally created and published by Mining Technology, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Sign in to access your portfolio
