MARKETS

Future Gympie split likely

GYMPIE Gold managing director Harry Adams believes the long-term future of the company lies with ...

Staff Reporter
Future Gympie split likely

Adams said the longwall face stability problems, which kneecapped the company late last year and into the early part of this year, highlighted the possibility of splitting the assets.

"To me this was never an issue until last year, but then last year was the first time that the two businesses didn't help each other," he said.

"I think that was a bit of a blip, but in the long term I have no doubt that the businesses will separate.

"But ultimately we will do whatever makes the most sense for shareholders' return, whether we bolt other mines on to our assets or bolt our assets on to other mines."

Adams said Gympie's main focus at the moment was the continued turnaround for Southland after it recorded an operating loss of $9.2 million for the half year to December 2002 contributing to an overall $11.6 million loss for the company.

The forecasted production for Southland in 2003-04 has been pegged between 1.8 million tonnes and 2.2 million tonnes.

"We want to keep production from Southland at around 2Mt while developing a long term production plan," he said.

Adams said the problems with the company's coal division had overshadowed the potential of its gold exploration.

"The focus of our exploration is to find further extensions of the fault hosted feeder quartz reef, which buckles and traps under a particular trap sequence," he said.

"We have identified seven such target zones, which have the capacity to host a zone like the one we are mining the remnants of.

"Really we started up in an area that was remanent mining and it has yielded 2 million ounces and what we are targeting is to find where that feeder goes to further afield and analogues of it, and to look for repeats of that style of zone." Mining News.net

TOPICS:

A growing series of reports, each focused on a key discussion point for the mining sector, brought to you by the Mining Monthly Intelligence team.

A growing series of reports, each focused on a key discussion point for the mining sector, brought to you by the Mining Monthly Intelligence team.

editions

ESG Mining Company Index: Benchmarking the Future of Sustainable Mining

The ESG Mining Company Index report provides an in-depth evaluation of ESG performance of 61 of the world's largest mining companies. Using a robust framework, it assesses each company across 9 meticulously weighted indicators within 6 essential pillars.

editions

Mining Magazine Intelligence Exploration Report 2024 (feat. Opaxe data)

A comprehensive review of exploration trends and technologies, highlighting the best intercepts and discoveries and the latest initial resource estimates.

editions

Mining Magazine Intelligence Future Fleets Report 2024

The report paints a picture of the equipment landscape and includes detailed profiles of mines that are employing these fleets

editions

Mining Magazine Intelligence Digitalisation Report 2023

An in-depth review of operations that use digitalisation technology to drive improvements across all areas of mining production