Barra celebrates

DECEMBER has been a time of celebration for Barra Resources, and not only because it was the first anniversary of the company’s Australian Stock Exchange listing.

The company, for which 20 million 25-cent shares were subscribed in the December 2000 IPO, has since traded at between 22 and 49 cents during a market period that has proved extremely testing for much larger players, let alone a junior gold explorer moving into first production.

Barra managed to raise a further $5 million during the year, attained a market capital of $15 million and established a mining operation from which it poured its first gold bar this week.

This operation, the company’s First Hit development, 145 kilometres north-north-west of Kalgoorlie, was advanced much earlier than expected, through Barra’s negotiations with local mining services company Barminco.

The Barminco contract has enabled Barra to pay just $330 per ounce of gold produced, for Barminco’s development, mining and treatment services, a much lower amount than the equivalent cash operating cost for many major producers.

First Hit has 76,000 proven ounces of gold and a life-span of only 18 months, but Barra has no debt and has started investigating four main targets in an eight kilometre stretch between the First Hit discovery and former producing mine Riverina.

This ground is totally untested.

While managing director Robert Colville, who is also a Barminco director, believes Barra may be sitting on lots of gold between First Hit and Riverina, he is particularly keen on another company project with two old goldmines south-east of Coolgardie.

The Burbanks project is expected to deliver the company a further 1,000,000 ounces of high quality gold and Barra will go after what it expects will be the first 200,000 ounces in the new year.