Auric Mining has recorded one of the highest-ever gold price sales in Australia after selling 1361 ounces from its Jeffreys Find mine at $3130 per ounce to the Perth Mint for a gross revenue of $4.26 million.
The joint venture operation between the company and BML Ventures has distributed the money with Auric receiving $2.2 million in its maiden disbursement of surplus cash from stage one of the project.
With gold prices continuing to bump along above the $3000 per ounce mark, gross revenue from stage one operations at Jeffreys Find is now more than $20 million with further cash surplus payments expected as soon as next month.
About 160,000 tonnes of ore has now been refined at the Greenfields mill at Coolgardie which management says is on track to complete processing in early November.
The Jeffreys Find deposit boasts 1.21 million tonnes grading 1.22g/t gold for a total of 47,200 ounces, and with a mine life of just under two years, Auric’s production schedule appears to have been sweetly timed. The profitable mining operation was based on a gold price of $2600 per ounce and with the current price of gold in Australia hovering around the $3100 per ounce mark, the cash till is ticking over nicely for the $7m market cap company.
Adding to the bottom line, Auric’s JV partner and experienced mining contractor, Kalgoorlie-based BML Ventures, will incur and pay all costs in relation to mining the gold resource at Jeffreys Find. The two companies will then retain an equal share of the net cash surplus after the payment of all mining and processing costs, providing Auric with a substantial cash boost.
Auric Mining managing director Mark English said: “The $2.2 million cash for Auric is right on cue. If the price of gold holds at current levels, then Jeffreys Find will produce more than $8 million surplus cash in total for the partners. We still have a couple of weeks to go but are now assured of an excellent result.”
It was only three years ago that Auric acquired Jeffreys Find from Mincor Resources and it is already producing cash. Management says revenue from the project will allow the company to inject millions of dollars into its ongoing development – and more specifically at its 100 per cent-owned Munda gold deposit near Widgiemooltha.
Munda hosts a resource of about 198,700 ounces of gold at a grade of 1.38g/t and is conveniently located about 34km south-west of the mining town of Kambalda. It sits just 3km south-west of Mincor’s Widgiemooltha gold project, which has a mineral resource of 4.3 million tonnes at 2g/t gold for 273,600 ounces.
A recently-released scoping study on Munda outlined a cashflow surplus of $76.9 million under a base-case scenario using an assumed gold price of $2600 per ounce.
The question now is whether Auric can top its impressive gold price of $3130 per ounce as more of the precious yellow metal flows from its Jeffreys Find operation.
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By Michael Philipps
