News

March 04, 2010

Solomon Gold Has Reduced Its Exposure To Elephant Hunting In Favour Of Generating Cash Flow In Queensland

By Charles Wyatt

Nick Mather has been taking a very different Aim-listed Solomon Gold around London this week, with help from John Meyer’s team at Fairfax. Different, that is, from the company that was last here a couple of years ago. At that time Solomon was focusing on Guadalcanal, the biggest of the Solomon Islands, where it had 3,000 square kilometres of exploration licences. Those of a certain age will remember the long drawn out battle of Guadalcanal, the biggest of the Solomon Islands, which took place in the Second World War and was the first major offensive undertaken by the Allies against Japan in 1942. The Solomon Islands stretch out in a south easterly direction from Papua New Guinea to Fiji and are right on the Rim of Fire. As such it was considered to have similar copper gold potential as the big deposits in the area such as Bougainville, Grasberg, Lihir and OK Tedi, but these big deposits do not hand over their secrets easily. A lot of money has to be poured down holes in the ground and plenty of disappointment taken on the chin. There are the good times too, and for Solomon one such was when a high grade skarn discovery was made at Sutakiki, following an intersection of 32 metres grading 9.45 grammes per tonne.

Solomon Gold has now spent around A$20 million at Guadalcanal on building a significant geological, geochemical and aeromagnetic database over the tenements, and the net result is that large porphyry copper gold deposits look very much on the cards.  In early 2009, however, Nick Mather decided to share the burden of funding exploration with Newmont, and Newmont agreed to spend US$6 million by March 2012 on the company’s Guadalcanal project to earn a 51 per cent interest. It can then take...