It rained yesterday morning – a rare occurrence in the storied history of the Diggers & Dealers Mining Forum in Kalgoorlie-Boulder.
It did not interrupt proceedings; if at all it allowed quite a few delegates to dust off and freshen up on their walk to the Goldfields Arts Centre for a second day of company presentations and digging and dealing for value.
Official attendance numbers might be up if not at record levels but anecdotal evidence – queues for lunch and at the portaloos as well as in the pubs – suggests some delegates might be spending more time watching the webcast than pressing the flesh.
Another topic of conversation was the number of first-time presenters, a reflection of management changes but also new companies joining the Diggers & Dealers line-up.
Those on the ground in Australia’s gold capital are certainly having a fun time.
None more so than the rowdy bunch who attended the Women in Mining WA event in the Kalgoorlie Town Hall on Monday night and drank the joint out of beer.
Howzat? The late Slim Dusty would be singing his socks off.
The Gold Industry Group was back in the Town Hall yesterday morning for its annual Diggers breakfast, offering up an interesting and broad-ranging conversation about the role of Australia’s gold in the world.
Then we got cracking with the day’s first presentation – naturally, a gold stock: Ramelius Resources.
The sole uranium producer – and one of only two uranium stocks – on the program, Boss Energy, rounded out the day’s presentations when its newish managing director Matt Dusci, the former IGO Acting CEO, took to the stage.
Rare earths were prominent during the day, led by surprise presenter Australian Strategic Materials. Surprise only because its takeover by Energy Fuels was originally supposed to complete by June 30 before being delayed to the end of this month.
The scheme meeting for ASM shareholders to vote on the Fuel Energy deal is scheduled for next week.
So ASM boss Rowena Smith got another chance to address Diggers including highlighting an extended disclaimer – in the process becoming the second female presenter on this year’s program. Assuming the Energy Fuels deal does go through, maybe Smith will be back next year representing Lynas Rare Earths?
Lindian Resources rolled out its CFO of one month, Derek Bideshi, to talk about the company’s under-construction Kangankunde rare earths project in Malawi and SARECO mixed rare earths concentrate processing joint venture in Kazakhstan.
Lindian is one of a few rare earths stocks – another is Northern Minerals – to have signed offtake deals with Iluka Resources for rare earths to be processed at Iluka’s taxpayer-funded, under-construction Eneabba refinery. Bideshi joined Lindian from Iluka.
Another company Iluka has kept eyes on in the past is Hastings Technology Metals. Market chatter a few years back suggested Iluka wanted to buy half of Hastings’ Yangibana project, in the Pilbara. It never went anywhere and Hastings ended up offloading 60% of Yangibana to Andrew Forrest’s Wyloo.
Wyloo is now running a process to sell its Yangibana stake. Maybe it will fall to Iluka, after all.
Hastings CEO Vince Catania, a one-time WA Labor parliamentarian who then switched to the Nationals and was struck off Labor’s Christmas card list (Labor does forget but does not forgive), took to the stage yesterday to talk up Yangibana and touch on the Wyloo sales process.
“Given the level of interest that has been brought upon this project, this is an opportunity to advance the project,” Catania said.
“(Yangibana is) a cheap buy for a great outcome when you have a project that is completely shovel ready and only requires just over $300 million to complete.”
Like Lindian, Hastings has gone north of Australia’s borders to search for its MREC solution. Unlike Lindian, it didn’t arrive in the Land of Borat but settled on Thailand.
All this rare earths talk in the Goldfields Arts Centre did not dull the shine of gold.
And the fact 2026 is the Year of the Horse gave Golden Horse Minerals CEO Nick Anderson lots to neigh about.
“It’s the year of the horse, get on the horse,” Anderson rinsed and repeated while talking up his company’s Hopes Hill project near Southern Cross. Hopes Hill has 3km of unlocked strike potential though Anderson, when asked by the moderator, was unable to convert this into furlongs.
Not to be outdone, the next presenter James Bruce, who is Black Cat Syndicate’s CEO and one of the many WA School of Mines alumni, presented on “what will be the Year of the Cat”.
Black Cat is finding more high-grade gold at its Paulsens mine in the Pilbara (the erstwhile founding asset of Northern Star Resources) and talking up the potential to reopen the Coyote mine in the (WA) Tanami.
“Over the past 34 years, I have been a digger and a dealer,” the engineer turned capital markets player turned company executive added.
“There is a lot of talk about critical minerals (but) the first critical mineral ever in Australia was actually the gold industry. Over the last 200 years gold played a really important part in the development of Australia as a store of wealth. And the industry itself does everything from exploration all the way through to producing the bars. We’re the only part of the mining industry that does that.”
Bruce made a fair point, as the crowds again gathered at The Perth Mint’s booth for a chance to touch and take a selfie with the 500kg gold bar.
At the end of Day 2 and following the Kal Tire Mining Traditional Bash, the crowd headed towards Hannan Street.
Mr Kalgoorlie, Ashok Parekh, held his annual bash in the Palace Hotel and shared his thoughts on Pauline Hanson, Anthony Albanese, Ben Roberts-Smith, local content, gold and bowl cancer tests. It was a lot.
After that, it was time for Peter Cook’s band to crank up AC/DC for another session in the Gold Bar. And there were almost enough ex-AFL stars in the crowd to field a team to beat the West Coast Eagles.
Today we will find out who has won Diggers & Dealers’ big gongs – and maybe even how funny Dave Hughes is.
