Tim Goyder's $166m mine deal continues avalanche of WA gold M&A

Tim Goyder’s Minerals 260 will pay $166.5m in transformational purchase of Zijin’s 2.3Moz Bullabulling gold project
With prices at record levels over $4300/oz, M&A fever continues in WA gold market
Aspirational gold juniors see growth opportunity in unloved assets held by majors

The first major gold deal of the year has been engineered by mining bigwig Tim Goyder, whose success in the battery metals boom put him on the map as one of the ASX’s top influencers.

While his major success stories Liontown Resources (ASX:LTR) and Chalice Mining (ASX:CHN) made their names on lithium, battery metals and platinum group elements, Liontown spinoff Minerals 260 (ASX:MI6) has engineered a major pivot into the gold market with a $166 million deal to acquire the 2.3Moz Bullabulling gold project near Coolgardie.

At least $156.5m of that will change hands in the form of cash paid to Norton Goldfields, the Australian subsidiary of China’s largest gold and copper mining company Zijin.

Another $10m will comprise shares in MI6, or cash if Norton exceeds a 4.9% holding in the junior – MI6 is confident foreign investment rules, which have been tightening for Chinese companies, will not emerge as an issue.

MI6 is hopeful the deal will propel it into the conversation as an emerging mid-tier gold producer, leveraging one of the largest undeveloped open pit resources in Australia.

“Zjin is a $90 billion market cap global company chasing copper, gold, lithium now,” MI6 managing director Luke McFadyen said.

“So it’s one of those fantastic projects that sits in enormous companies. I think they operate 30 mines globally and 20 of them are in China, the rest are in Africa and South America.

“It’s a big company selling what we think is a fantastic asset.”

Gold in focus

Zijin acquired Bullabulling in a hostile takeover during a major gold bust in 2014 for ~$25 million, but has kept the project on ice since while it’s run the Paddington Mill, Binduli heap leach and other nearby mines around Kalgoorlie over the past decade.

The mining leases, which are granted and come with native title agreements already in place, once produced close to 180,000oz in the 1990s when gold was trading around $500/oz. It’s now worth over $4300/oz, powered to record highs last year by global geopolitical instability, central bank demand and, eventually, interest rate cuts.

A strong US dollar has made operations within Australia and held by ASX companies all the more attractive.

McFadyen, who was on the other side of the tent facilitating the sale of OZ Minerals in its $9.6 billion takeover by BHP as an executive at the copper and gold miner, said his focus has been on bringing advanced gold and copper assets to Minerals 260.

“When I joined Minerals 260 what I pitched to Tim Goyder and the rest of the board was that we’re going to build a big company and do it through M&A.”

McFadyen says gold and copper assets are scaleable, with a depth of experience on building and operating assets in Australia.

“The transparency of the market relative to other metals and the ability to grow is what we like about it, investors love a great gold company and we’ve seen that many times on the ASX,” he said.

“I can’t find anyone in the world who thinks gold is going backwards from here. You look at all the drivers of the gold price and they’re all heading in the right direction.”

A survey of users on trading platform BullionVault found the average expected gold to move 17.6% higher in 2025 to $3070/oz.

State Street Global Advisors hedged their bets a bit more, saying the market’s response to policies from incoming US President Donald Trump and how potentially inflationary tariff and economic growth policies impact interest rate cuts could see a big variance in gold prices.

The fourth largest asset manager in the world rates a 50% probability of gold trading around all time highs seen last year, between US$2600-2900/oz, with a 30% chance of hitting an upside case of US$2900-3100/oz and 20% probability of a US$2200-2600/oz bear case if US economic growth outperforms and rates are paused.

Tim Goyder has made another big splash with a shock gold deal. Pic: Josh Chiat

Drilling to begin

Previous owners of the Bullabulling project, which contains 60Mt at 1.2g/t for 2.3Moz of open pittable gold, have punched 12,000 drill holes and conducted 530,000m of drilling.

But McFadyen says it remains, like many gold projects in WA, underexplored at depth. A Bell Potter and Argonaut led raising is expected to deliver the capital required to fund the acquisition, an 80,000m RC and diamond drill program and cash to get MI6 through to a final investment decision, with the company expecting to sew up re-compliance and relist on the ASX by April.

“The resource only goes to 250m, so we want to see what there is deeper as we drill,” McFadyen said.

“It’s very likely it’s going to remain a big open pit operation given the grade.”

Tim Goyder, who remains chair of lithium miner Liontown, stepped up into a heightened role as chair of MI6 ahead of the deal’s announcement in December and holds a 13.3% stake in the company, which has previously been exploring for gold and other commodities at the earlier-stage Moora project in WA’s Wheatbelt.

The man himself said he wants to repeat the Liontown story – growing from a nano cap to construct the billion dollar Kathleen Valley lithium mine – in the gold space.

“There’s no reason why we can’t build a substantial company and you just look at some of our peers who are actually mining now on similar deposits, (you can see) what market cap can be achieved,” he said on a call with analysts and investors.

“We won’t be doing a thesis, we want to do it in good timing, with good people and my phone’s been ringing this morning with engineers, drilling contractors, all sorts of people wanting to get involved with this project.”

Flurry of activity

The acquisition is hardly the first to light up the WA gold sector as ambitious juniors position to become producers and large players seek growth options in the context of a record gold price run.

Catalyst Metals (ASX:CYL) set the ‘zero to hero’ template with its consecutive deals in 2023 to buy out Vango Mining and Superior Gold, consolidating the Plutonic Gold Belt and turning into a 100,000ozpa miner virtually overnight.

Raleigh Finlayson did similar in charge of Genesis Minerals (ASX:GMD), acquiring the underperforming Gwalia gold mine and Dacian Gold in moves that made the company one of two big players in the Leonora gold district. Its neighbour and perennial merger suspect Vault Minerals (ASX:VAU) was formed from the marriage of Red 5 and Silver Lake Resources last year, one of two big ‘mergers of equals’ alongside

Northern Star Resources (ASX:NST) and Andrew Forrest backed Greatland Gold delivered the two biggest chess moves, with $20bn capped NST announcing the $5bn scrip acquisition of De Grey Mining (ASX:DEG) and its world class Hemi project in December and London-listed Greatland paying US$475m for Newmont’s Telfer gold mine and Havieron JV stake.

At the smaller end of the market, Horizon Minerals (ASX:HRZ) swallowed up Greenstone Resources to consolidate ~2Moz in small deposits around Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie, while Brightstar Resources (ASX:BTR) poached unlisted Linden Gold and Alto Metals, made a rejected offer for Aurumin (ASX:AUN) and paid Gateway Mining (ASX:GML) $14.5m for the Montague East gold project to build a 3Moz resource base across the Laverton, Menzies and Sandstone gold districts.

Astral Resources (ASX:AAR), which owns the +1Moz Mandilla gold project near Kambalda, has been mooted as a target for South Africa’s Gold Fields, owner of the 350,000ozpa St Ives gold mine. But it has the scale and market support now to develop Mandilla on its own and turned hunter itself late last month, gaining exclusive rights to due diligence on 300,000oz neighbour Maximus Resources (ASX:MXR) in a consolidation play.

Equally, there are miners picking up unloved assets from larger players to follow the same strategy as MI6, albeit at a smaller scale.

Strata Minerals (ASX:SMX) shifted from battery metals to gold, acquiring the Penny South project immediately adjacent to the ultra-high grade orebody controlled by Ramelius Resources (ASX:RMS) last year.

Javelin Minerals (ASX:JAV), Labyrinth Resources (ASX:LRL) and Leeuwin Metals (ASX:LM1) have all taken on ex-RMS sites, turning the rigs to ounces and discoveries left in the ground by the mid-tier at the Coogee, Vivien and Marda projects in WA’s Goldfields.

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Javelin Minerals, Astral Resources, Strata Minerals and Brightstar Resources are Stockhead advertisers, they did not sponsor this article.