Who got a prize? Pic: Getty Images
Diggers and Dealers: Wrap it up
Mining
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- Diggers and Dealers ends as gold dominates a rough and tumble week in Kalgoorlie
- Some choice presentations from yesterday take our bespoke prizes
- And the real awards were dealt out at yesterday’s Gala Dinner, with Azure, Emerald and WA1 among the winners
The pubs are closed, the miners are back on the road and the dealmakers are sleeping hungover in the Qantas Lounge of the Kalgoorlie Airport.
And with all that in the book, we’ve got one last dispatch for the Goldfields to bring you, with a few odd bits and pieces to roll out in the days to come.
Again we’ve got a few awards to hand out, inspired by the company director who awarded Stockhead the title of most fashionable man in Kalgoorlie on Tuesday night.
The bar was lower than the ASX on Monday, but we’re still flattered.
That said, we don’t want to create an award just to give it to ourselves.
Turnaround of the year
Last year’s award for most cooked presentation, awarded by erstwhile deputy editor and friend of the show Reuben Adams, went to then Delta Lithium (ASX:DLI) boss David Flanagan, whose “big and very good” presentation on the Yinnetharra lithium project will live on in infamy.
Maybe a response to the perceived glibness of that performance, Flanno was more reserved – his maiden slide in the hotseat at Arrow Minerals (ASX:AMD) was arguably the densest of the three days in Kal, featuring no less than eight footnotes, none perceptible to the naked eye.
That didn’t stop him delivering some classic lines, calling ‘Pilbara Killer’ iron ore mine Simandou the ‘Pilbara Saver’ as it looks to find similar deposits to the north in the African country of Guinea, and saying the company has so much activity going on shareholders say absorbing it all is like drinking water out of a fire hose.
Brilliant stuff. The explorer led by the former Atlas Iron boss was up 50% yesterday, albeit at a 0.3c price point, after announcing a maiden exploration target of 170-340Mt at a grade range of approximately 40-46% Al2O3, and 1-4% SiO2 at the Niagara project.
Bauxite demand has doubled since the Guinean site was last drilled by Vale, Arrow says.
Fighting words of the year
Ken Brinsden, whose career was built selling iron ore and lithium to China, put out the rallying cry to the West yesterday to break the back of Chinese domination in the critical minerals sector.
In words that would have made the ever moving forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom Kim Beazley proud.
The former Labor heavyweight and Opposition Leader put his rallying cry out on Monday in the keynote speech for the ‘mining brigade’ to receive government funds to grab a foothold against China in the rare earths race.
Brinsden, whose Quebec-based lithium explorer Patriot Battery Metals (ASX:PMT) owns the Shaakichiuwaanaan project in Canada’s James Bay district, says government intervention is needed to build refining capacity near the dominant raw materials bounty in countries like WA and Canada.
He thinks without that Communist China can use its market share to suppress prices and make commercial operators in the liberal West uncompetitive.
“My personal view is absolutely, and we should have done it a decade ago. China’s got the best part of a decade’s lead as a function of the West kind of sitting on their hands, and the time to change the game is absolutely now, or should have happened already,” Brinsden said.
“China’s in such a dominant position that it represents a huge threat to a lot of industries in the West, the least of which is the car industry and we’ve got a lot of catch up to do.
“So there is going to have to be a change in behaviour. China doesn’t play by our rules.”
Previously known as Corvette, the Shaakichiuwaanaan project now contains 80.1 Mt at 1.44% Li2O indicated and 62.5 Mt at 1.31% Li2O inferred with an exploration target for additional tonnage of 146 to 231 Mt at 1.0 to 1.5% Li2O.
That could push the mine into the league in terms of scale of the world’s two biggest hard rock lithium operations Pilgangoora and Greenbushes, former Pilbara Minerals (ASX:PLS) and Atlas Iron boss Brinsden said.
Halfway bet of the year
Diggers and Dealers announced a record attendance of 2800 delegates on Wednesday, a figure that raised a few eyebrows from attendees looking at what seemed to be a pretty demure crowd strolling the booths.
The mining sector has been hit with some rough commodity moves and economic softness in China and the USA this year.
Of course, gold is still flying the flag, but the wait for the recovery in the cycle appears to be on, with job cuts at Mineral Resources (ASX:MIN) on Tuesday and calls for royalty relief from lithium miners suggesting we’re getting bottom-y.
Enter WA Mines Minister David Michael, who arrived in town yesterday spruiking quicker PoW (drilling) approvals among other things.
Asked if we’re looking at a downturn in the face of hits like the 700 job cuts also announced by Fortescue (ASX:FMG) last month, he tried to remain upbeat.
“We continue to talk to those industries and those companies that have made those announcements this year,” the minister said.
“We continue to monitor the situation. I still think the mining industry, we see some amazing things happening in gold, there’s some amazing numbers in exploration not too recently, which we’ll continue to monitor, but we know that exploration is a good bellwether for the future of the industry.
“Job cuts obviously are concerning but as an industry as a whole I’m still pretty confident it has in the short and long term a pretty bright future.”
The real awards
Oh, they give those out too.
Digger of the Year went to Emerald Resources (ASX:EMR), the $2.3bn Cambodian gold miner, which has seen its shares lift 54% in the past year after producing 114,000oz at all in sustaining costs of US$818/oz.
Its Okvau mine is the first commercial operation in the South-east Asian country.
Tony Rovira’s Azure Minerals sealed its expected Dealer of the Year gong for selling the massive Andover lithium project near Roebourne to SQM and Gina Rinehart for $1.7bn.
The emerging company award went to WA1 Resources (ASX:WA1) for its Luni niobium discovery in the West Arunta region of WA, a frontier find that could be the largest deposit of the rare metal unearthed in 70 years at 200Mt at 1% niobium pentoxide.
The Media award went to ABC The Business journo and presenter Rachel Pupazzoni, while former AngloGold Ashanti Australian boss Michael Erickson, a champion for diversity and inclusion in the Australian mining industry, won the GJ Stokes award for lifetime achievement in the mining industry.
Missed our complete and comprehensive coverage of Australia’s biggest annual mining conference? No worries, you can read it all here…
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