Forrestania Resources has vaulted towards the gold big league, cracking the coveted two-million-ounce resource mark as shareholders gave the green light to its game-changing acquisition of the Edna May gold project in Western Australia.
The company says its global mineral resource estimate now stands at a hefty 58.6 million tonnes grading 1.1 grams per tonne gold for 2.078 million ounces of gold. The milestone was achieved after the completion of the Edna May acquisition, which added a JORC-compliant resource of 30.7 million tonnes at 1.0g/t gold, totalling 945,000 ounces of gold, to its inventory.
The new project, 315 kilometres east of Perth in the Westonia Greenstone Belt, is about more than just ounces in the ground. The deal also delivers a swag of established infrastructure, including a 2.9-million-tonne-per-annum conventional carbon-in-leach processing plant, which has been on care and maintenance since April 2025.
The assets also include a 185-room accommodation village, an airstrip, a tailings storage facility, grid power connection and a significant portfolio of mining leases and tenements extending across an estimated 1000 square kilometres.
The new operation was acquired from well-regarded WA gold producer Ramelius Resources in a $300 million deal struck in June, comprising $210 million in cash and $90 million in scrip through the issue of 225 million fully paid Forrestania shares, leaving Ramelius with a substantial 9.4 per cent stake in its new owner.
Forrestania Resources chairman David Geraghty said: “The addition of the Edna May gold project immediately elevates Forrestania into a new category of gold company, with a global Mineral Resource exceeding 2 million ounces and ownership of one of Western Australia’s established gold processing hubs. Beyond the resource itself, Edna May provides us with the infrastructure platform required to accelerate our development strategy, creating opportunities to unlock value across both the existing resource base and our broader regional portfolio.”
Edna May sits just one kilometre from the town of Westonia and about 10km north of the Great Eastern Highway, providing solid logistical advantages. The project also includes the Tampia and Symes satellite projects.
The global resource Forrestania has now amassed is underpinned by a solid base of higher-confidence resource categories, with 29.1 million tonnes in the indicated category and 1.4 million tonnes in the measured category. The Edna May resource itself contains a substantial 23 million tonnes of indicated resources at 1.1g/t gold for 700,000 ounces of gold.
The company says Edna May’s processing plant has already proved its mettle, historically pulling gold from the ore at recoveries of about 94 per cent, highlighting both the deposit’s metallurgical credentials and the reliability of its processing circuit.
Management has flagged that future work will involve technical studies to support a potential restart of operations at site. The company also sees potential for both underground resource expansion and drilling at regional targets.
The company’s aggressive gold expansion strategy comes as global mine production growth continues to lag behind persistent investment and central bank demand, meaning higher price floors and a current gold price of A$6110 per ounce. The heady combination has provided solid margins, providing plenty of incentive for the likes of Forrestania to dust off some of WA’s better-established brownfields gold projects and give them another crack at life.
With the keys to an established gold mine and processing plant now firmly in hand and a global resource inventory north of two million ounces, Forrestania looks like it has assembled a formidable tool-kit for future growth. In a market hungry for new production, the company has just taken a significant step up the value chain from explorer to potential producer.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Doug Bright
