Mark Mentiplay

Qantas is planning a significant patch-up job on its over-crowded Perth domestic terminal, spending around $50 million in what is considered an interim step which could put off a major redevelopment decision for as much as seven years.

The Western Australian government has called on its federal counterpart to beef up its Trade Practices Act (TPA) to help protect small business against predatory pricing by big business.

Small business accounts for 97 per cent of all businesses in Western Australia, but an estimated 40 per cent do not have a strategic business plan.

The role of the banks in Australia’s small business sector is crucial and will remain so. No single topic generated more discussion at the recent WA Business News SME forum than the big banks, their service, or lack of it, relationships with them and thei

Running a small business can take a horrendous toll on family and private life.

Operators of small businesses are looking increasingly to vital communications solutions outside of the big telcos, Telstra and Optus.

Cash flow is the major concern facing small business enterprises, according to two major national surveys.

Facing of a range of issues beyond their control, small businesses are having a tough time. And there appears to be no silver bullet, other than the continuing innovation, drive and determination demonstrated at a recent WA Business News forum.

The inability to attract and retain good staff, and the combination of rapidly escalating commercial rents and a shortage of warehouse and office space, are hurting small business in Western Australia.

Western Australia’s next gold mine, Crescent Gold Ltd’s upgraded Laverton operation, is scheduled to be in production before Christmas and crank up quickly to 90,000 ounces a year.

Perth company Cool Energy is looking to apply its ground-breaking technology to strip prohibitive greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) from natural gas streams, to a number of onshore gas fields in Australia and other parts of the world.

After three recent profit downgrades, Consolidated Minerals is looking to raise $70 million to shore up its Kambalda nickel aspirations, while the associated Kiernan family bails out.

Australian Renewable Fuels Ltd is carrying the Western Australian biofuels banner into a rapidly expanding, multi-billion dollar international market.

It seems ironic that, in the midst of the current resources boom and rising gold price, there have not been more gold mine openings in the golden state recently.

A major new international energy player is coming to Perth following the $18.5 million acquisition of Aberdeen-based IGL Oil & Gas Consultants by Finnish global consulting and engineering group, Poyry.

The federal and state governments, and their associated regulatory bodies, should stay out of the battle over third-party access to BHP Billiton’s Pilbara iron ore railway.

As China battles the seeming inevitability of a 19 per cent price hike in iron ore prices, the country’s largest iron ore importer is moving quietly to stitch up more long-term supply from Western Australia.

From a cheap early 1990s entry into a struggling gold explorer, Terry Streeter has built a $100 million base from which to launch a major international resources exploration and production house.

Western Areas NL’s push to become Australia’s next mid-tier nickel producer is expected to begin in the second half of this year, with production from its Flying Fox project at Forrestania rising to 13,500 tonnes a year in 2010.

Pilbara copper and nickel producer Fox Resources Ltd’s major shareholder, Terry Streeter, has dropped a further $400,000 into the company’s Whundo prospects following some spectacular zinc drilling results there.

The dearth of mineral exploration in Western Australia is costing the state millions of dollars in rapidly escalating world copper earnings.

Successful diversified Perth-based miner Straits Resources Ltd is planning to spin-off 40 per cent of its major asset into a new, initially energy-based clone in Singapore later this year.

The abolition of restraints on the expanded production of Australian uranium could clear the way for an enrichment business worth $20 billion a year by 2020.

Riding a strong oil price tailwind amid rising oil and gas production in the US, Perth-based Amadeus Energy Ltd is powering towards a record year.

Perth company Arafura Resources NL is to spin-off its Northern Territory uranium projects into a new, as yet unnamed, company. The move will leave Arafura as a gold and rare earths company based on its substantial Nolans Bore rare earths, phosphate and ur

The pressure on the Australian Labor Party at a state and federal level to allow expanded uranium mining is building as fast as the uranium price is rising and new explorers are pouring into the market.

While the rise and fall of opportunist Pilbara iron ore aspirant Cazaly Resources Ltd has won and lost sharemarket punters millions of dollars, its battle for the Shovelanna deposit is destined for the courts for months, possibly years.

This week, Department of Industry and Resources director general Jim Limerick will begin a task crucial to Western Australia’s economic future.

TheWA government’s unexplained rejection of Cazaly Resources Ltd’s claim to the Shovelanna iron ore deposit in the Pilbara could deflect investment from the state’s resources sector and, for the first time, raised the real spectre of sovereign risk.

Western Australia’s emerging Mid-West iron ore companies, seed producers from Australia’s second largest iron ore region, have shown the state government the money.

Perth-based Doral Mineral Industries Ltd has moved to shore up its burgeoning mineral sands mining and zircon production business by taking a 9 per cent stake in Queenslander Diatreme Resources Ltd, and its huge Eucla Basin project.

The old Three Mile Hill gold processing facility at historic Coolgardie could be back in production as early as September or October this year.