Blackham to refurb Wiluna Gold Plant for production

Blackham Resources haven’t wasted any time putting their recent $20m capital raise to good use with the key refurbishment contract at the old Wiluna Gold plant now approved for signing by the Blackham board.

The refurbishing of the Wiluna Gold Plant represents a major milestone in Blackham’s business plan after they managed to purchase the mothballed plant and the Wiluna tenements surrounding it from Apex Minerals in 2014 for just $4.7m with $2.6m of that deferred until the year of production.

Apex originally paid $29m for the project and spent $71m exploring it before ceding it to Blackham for just $4.7m. Blackham will now spend around $32m refurbishing the plant ready for production.

Amazingly Blackham only paid an additional $1.4m to a private owner for the entire Matilda tenement package in 2011.

Since then the company has added around 1.6m ounces to the project which just goes to show that you have to know where to look when searching for that elusive yellow metal.

Blackham’s DFS predicts the entire project will bank free cash of $234m over the next 7 years which is not a bad result considering they only dished out around $6m to buy it and $32m to refurbish the plant.

The Wiluna Gold Plant refurbishment will be undertaken by Interquip/Mintrex as the Structural, Mechanical and Piping contractor and Practon Engineering as the Electrical & Instrumentation contractor. The company says that all critical path long lead items for refurbishment have been ordered and engineering work has commenced.

Interquip recently completed the refurbishment of the Thunderbox Gold Plant ahead of schedule and under budget

Blackham is also committing to the refurbishment of the Matilda camp via a village refurbishment and village management contract with Catercare in readiness for production possibly as soon as next quarter.