Horizon banks ounces as WA Black Swan gold hub gathers pace

Horizon Minerals has turned more of its Phillips Find gold into cold hard cash, banking another $10 million in March from the project’s joint venture (JV) as the last of the mine’s toll-treatment campaigns wrapped up.

Mining by the company’s JV partner, BML Ventures finished in late November last year, with two processing campaigns and all five toll-treatment runs now ticked off.

In the final run, Horizon processed 127,043 tonnes grading 2.31 grams per tonne (g/t) gold at a nearby third-party mill, producing 9141 ounces at an impressive recovery rate of 96.9 per cent.

Lower-grade ore sent through Focus Minerals’ Three Mile Hill mill totalled 26,927 tonnes grading 1.13g/t gold for 879 ounces, at a recovery of 89.8 per cent.

Across the full Phillips Find campaign, the JV has now processed 225,988 tonnes at an average of 2.02g/t gold, yielding 14,095 ounces of high-grade production. 

An additional ore parcel of about 30,000 tonnes grading 0.8g/t gold was also treated during the quarter, although its final reconciliation is yet to be completed. Once the books are squared away, Horizon expects to receive a final cash distribution in April. 

Horizon Minerals managing director and chief executive officer Mr Grant Haywood said: “The cash received from the Phillips Find mining campaign strengthens Horizon Minerals’ available capital and supports the acceleration of the Black Swan Processing Hub as a regional centre for gold processing. With the project now fully funded, Horizon is well placed to advance its strategy of becoming the next mid-tier gold producer in the WA Goldfields.”

The company’s estimated unaudited cash stack now stands at a whopping $114.1 million, including the latest $10M Phillips Find payment, a final $20M payment from its Lake Johnston asset sale and $55 million from the first tranche of a recent placement. 

However, that total excludes an additional $120 million from Tranche 2 of the placement, which remains subject to shareholder approval. Horizon also holds about $21.4 million in unrestricted listed shareholdings.

The company says the growing cash pile will give it the financial firepower to continue refurbishing and converting its 2.2 million-tonne-per-annum Black Swan processing hub, 45km northeast of Kalgoorlie-Boulder in WA’s Goldfields.

Horizon’s plan to convert a former nickel processing application into a regional gold plant is a key plank of the company’s broader hub-and-spoke strategy.

With gold processing capacity in the Kalgoorlie region clearly pretty tight, thanks to the ongoing meteoric rise in the gold price, now at a sizzling A$7255 per ounce, Horizon is clearly happy to be stacking cash and bolstering control of its own future processing options. 

If the final Phillips Find numbers land as expected next month, it will amount to another neat contribution to Horizon’s war chest as its proposed Black Swan hub venture moves from plan to reality.

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