The new head of Laneway Resources is bringing his A-game as he looks to transform the junior into a major gold producer.

Laneway Resources (ASX:LNY) has tapped seasoned mining executive Brad Gordon, who has over 30 years of experience in the gold mining industry. During that time, he has successfully led and grown the value of numerous mining operations around the globe.

Gordon joined Laneway back in December, initially as a non-executive director and now will take on the role of CEO as part of Laneway’s strategy to build a highly skilled and diversified management team.

From 2013 to December 2017 Gordon was the CEO of Acacia Mining, where he led an impressive turnaround of the company which saw Acacia’s value increase significantly from £450m to £2.5bn.

Acacia Mining was acquired in 2019 by of one of the world’s largest gold miners, Barrick Gold.

Prior to that he was the CEO of Indonesia-focused Intrepid Mines, which grew from a market cap of $120m to a peak of $1.4bn during his tenure.

Before joining Intrepid, Gordon was the CEO of Emperor Mines, which owned gold mines in Fiji and Papua New Guinea. At the time he was at the helm, Emperor Mines was the third largest gold producer listed on the ASX.

And Gordon hasn’t wasted any time in putting into action his plan to turn Laneway into a gold force to be reckoned with.

“Since his appointment as a non-executive director in December, Brad has already been making a considerable contribution,” chairman Stephen Bizzell said.

“Now in taking on the role of CEO, his proven track record for execution and value

creation will be invaluable as Laneway progresses its mining operations and focuses on the future exploration and development of its Agate Creek gold mine, explores our New Zealand gold project and reviews other project opportunities.”

Following multiple site visits to the Agate Creek gold project in north Queensland and a detailed desktop review of the New Zealand gold project and the Ashford coking coal project in northern New South Wales, Gordon has a clear strategy for leading Laneway to success.

“What I saw excited me,” he said of the Agate Creek gold project.

“I obviously have a long career in gold mining, and I’ve always been impressed by grade. Grade has always been important, and Agate Creek is A) high-grade and B) I think I’m coming in at a time that is really early in the understanding of that deposit and that whole region.

“I think there’s a lot of potential for more discoveries in that area and potentially larger scale discoveries.

“It is my intention to get a full review of the exploration of that whole basin completed in the next few months just to see what we can do with it.”
 

Vote of confidence in Laneway

Demonstrating Gordon’s confidence in Laneway and its portfolio of high-quality exploration assets, he recently injected $225,000 of his own cash to acquire 30 million shares in the company.

Agate Creek has a material 367,000oz resource with significant exploration upside. The deposit is open at depth and has a large surrounding tenement position. Drilling undertaken late last year identified a continuation of the high-grade gold mineralisation at depth.

The project is located 60km west of the world class Kidston deposit, which historically produced over 3.4 million oz of gold and silver.

Laneway had been taking a staged approach to mining the resources at Agate Creek to generate early cash flow to advance exploration over the adjacent highly prospective tenement package.

Laneway Resources Gold
 

North Queensland rife with gold opportunities

Gordon has already initiated a full technical review at Agate Creek and has also identified future opportunities in northern Queensland.

“I think if you’ve got the right foundation assets, then the industry is ripe for some consolidation and given the assets that Laneway has and the team we’re putting together, I would like to think we could participate in that consolidation going forward and put some size into Laneway and become a serious producer,” Gordon told Stockhead.

Drilling is also set to begin soon at Laneway’s New Zealand gold project.

“As far as the New Zealand gold project is concerned, it’s underexplored,” he said. “The information that is available to date suggests that it is crying out for some drilling and you’ll see that we’ll be drilling there very, very shortly.

“I think it will be interesting to see how that develops.”

The New Zealand project is a large deposit located along trend of several multi-million oz gold and silver deposits.

It sits immediately adjacent to OceanaGold’s (ASX:OGC) Martha mine at Waihi, which is currently producing about 100,000oz of gold each year and has produced over 12 million oz since 1879.

Part of Laneway’s strategy is to establish itself as a “pure play” gold company and it is currently progressing potential divestment options for its Ashford coking coal project.

Laneway has locked in a conditional sale agreement to realise value from the project.

 

This article was developed in collaboration with Laneway Resources, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

 

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.

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