Raihani to lead Aurumin

Aurumin non-exec director and businessman Daniel Raihani has moved into the managing director’s chair at the gold and iron ore explorer after the departure of company founder Brad Valiukas. Raihani has been a non-executive director at Aurumin for the past year and is an experienced accountant and businessman with various property and commercial interests.

He is being joined at the boardroom table by John Ingram, a geologist with 25 years’ experience, both locally and internationally across a range of corporate, technical and operational roles.

Ben Broom is also joining the board for a potentially exciting precious metals ride into the new year, given the roaring gold price.

Mr Broom comes to the board with 20 years’ experience across the finance and mining services sectors and is a founder and current director of mining services contracting firm Mineral Mining Services, which is responsible for some of the mining contracts in the WA goldfields.

Mr Raihani has controlling equity positions and directorships in private companies that are involved in real estate sales and management, property development, manufacturing, automotive exports and tax consultancy, with offices in multiple jurisdictions including the UAE, Australia & Hong Kong.

He is also a director of fellow ASX-listed juniors Voltaic Strategic Resources and First Au.

The recent board reshuffle was triggered by the resignation of long-standing managing director and founding shareholder Brad Valiukas.

Aurumin’s new managing director Daniel Raihani said: “I've had the pleasure of working alongside Brad over the past 12 months as we work towards critical mass in the developing Sandstone region. I’ve really valued his contributions and on behalf of all shareholders, thank him for his service. I welcome both Mr John Ingram and Mr Ben Broom to the Aurumin board and look forward to working with them to extracting further shareholder value in a very exciting and prospective gold region.”

Aurumin recently received overtures from ASX-listed Brightstar Resources for a non-binding and indicative offer for a potential joint-venture at its Central Sandstone gold project.

The board of directors at the time planned to consider the merits of the offer in conjunction with its advisors, however no update has been provided since the initial reveal of Brightstar’s interest.

Aurumin is sitting on a 946,000-ounce gold resource across its Central Sandstone and Johnson Range projects.

The company’s flagship project at Central Sandstone in WA’s Mid West region, comprises a gold resource of 881,000 ounces with open-pittable material consisting of 7.622 million tonnes grading 1.3 grams per tonne for 307,400 ounces.

Its underground resource at the project consists of 10.8 million tonnes grading 1.6g/t gold for 573,900 ounces.

The company also has a 64,700-ounce gold resource grading 2.51g/t gold at its Johnson Range project, combining for the total resource of 946,000 ounces across the two projects.

Management previously alluded to its proximity to the magical million-ounce figure and expressed its desire to push through the sought after number with targeted upcoming drill programs.

The company plans to launch into its prospective Plum Pudding ground where a previous stellar hit of 18m going 25.8g/t ramped up the excitement level there and narrowed its focus on hammering the area further with the drill-bit.

Aurumin says all approvals to begin the reverse-circulation drill program are in place.

Recently Aurumin unearthed iron ore from an exploration program at Central Sandstone, with assays returning a significant peak grade of 67 per cent from rock-chips and the identification of banded-iron outcrops, potentially 5m to 40m wide across a non-continuous 6 kilometre strike of banded-iron material at surface. The find has provided management with the confidence there may be economic iron deposits contained within its ground.

Aurumin believes the iron ore may be suitable for exporting as direct shipping ore material.

Shortly after the discovery management opted to sell the iron ore rights to private company Newcam Minerals for a cool $500,000 with an exclusive six-month option on the rights.

Newcam will conduct due diligence across the site. If it is satisfied with the exploration results from an agreed program decided upon by the two parties, it may exercise its right to earn a 50 per cent interest in the iron ore rights and establish a joint venture agreement with Aurumin.

If Newcam decides to exercise the option, it will result in a further $500,000 payment to Aurumin and the private company will also stump-up a $5 million loan to fund production start-up, with the money to be repaid from operating profits. Any additional payment received would provide valuable funding for Aurumin’s exploration programs to hunt down more gold at Central Sandstone.

To add a further kick to Aurumin’s cash balance, if a 2012 JORC-compliant resource is released for more than 3 million tonnes grading an average 60 per cent iron, Newcam will pump a further $1m into the company’s bank account.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au