Researcher poses two scenarios for Nunavut gold mine closure – by David Murphy (Nunatsiaq-On-Line.ca – December 16, 2014)

http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/

“People are actually left with mining skills, but not with other skills once the mine closes”

The 1,800-person community of Baker Lake has less than three years to go before the Meadowbank gold mine, about 100 kilometres from the town, closes down.

Until then, questions linger about how Nunavut’s only inland hamlet can support itself afterwards, problem free.

“People said overwhelmingly that — with the mine closing in 2017 — there is very little awareness and very little preparedness for that scenario,” said Annabell Rixen, a master’s student assessing the mine closure and community preparedness as part of a project called “Tuktu.”

Rixen’s presentation was part of the four-day Arctic Change conference, hosted by ArcticNet, which unfolded Dec. 8 to Dec. 12 at the Ottawa Conference Centre. Rixen boiled her research down to two visions: a worst and best-case scenario.

The best case: job training programs are implemented to stimulate new local businesses and money is injected into mental health, childcare and cultural programming. Also, dwindling caribou numbers return to full strength.

“As the elders emphasized: let our land recover. We need to give our land the proper time to rejuvenate,” Rixen told Nunatsiaq News.

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NEWS RELEASE: Johnson Matthey sells Gold and Silver Refining business for £118 million

The business will be divested to Asahi Holdings, Inc., a collector, refiner and recycler of precious and rare metals from waste materials

15 Dec 2014 – Johnson Matthey announces that it has agreed to divest its Gold and Silver Refining business to Asahi Holdings, Inc. (Asahi), a collector, refiner and recycler of precious and rare metals from waste materials, for £118 million (US $186 million) in cash, subject to typical post-closing adjustments. The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of March 2015.

Johnson Matthey’s Gold and Silver Refining business is a refiner of primary and secondary gold and silver materials. It serves customers globally from refineries in Salt Lake City, USA and Brampton, Canada. The business also provides investment casting services from its St Catharines facility in Canada. In total, the business employs approximately 340 people.

In the financial year ended 31st March 2014 the Gold and Silver Refining business had sales excluding the value of precious metals (sales) of £44 million and for the six months ended 30th September 2014, its sales were £19 million. Its return on sales is typically
around 25%.

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Angkor Gold: A gold standard for CSR – by Joseph Kirschke (Asia Miner – December 1, 2014)

http://www.asiaminer.com/

BANTEAY, Cambodia: Accessing this village eight hours north of Phnom Penh is daunting on the best of days, not least during the rainy season. On the main artery from the capital, buses, cars and tractor-trailers alike can be seen moored in the mud, all resembling helplessly grounded ships. Another 30-minute ride can foil the hardiest off-road vehicle at the gruelling final stretch.

Visitors are greeted by barefoot children supervised by adults and elderly, listless and weathered far beyond their years amid thatched huts and stray, emaciated oxen. But beneath the surface, something remarkable is unfolding nearby a mid-sized copper-gold deposit: Canadian junior Angkor Gold Corp is fulfilling a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) mandate – one unprecedented for a miner its size in the region. Stakeholder engagement through Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) blooms here near a rainforest clearing of peppercorn, cassava and cashew patches, and classrooms full of students.

A clean slate

History hasn’t been kind to Cambodia. Over the half decade ending in 1979, the Khmer Rouge purged the intellectual class while bringing the country to ‘zero’ for an agrarian-based communist society after a brutal US bombing campaign. In all, two million lives were lost as the world stood by in silence; memories of forced starvation, mass graves and unspeakable atrocities continue to elicit tears to this day.

But Cambodia has turned the page, with its emerging market economy and small-scale mining industry an open book. Early next year, Angkor and Mesco Gold Cambodia will begin operating one of the country’s newest commercial mines while establishing Phnom Penh’s first continuing royalty revenue stream from mining.

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NEWS RELEASE: Silver Demand for Industrial Applications Forecast to Reach Nearly 680 Million Ounces in 2018

https://www.silverinstitute.org/site/

(Washington, D.C. – December 10, 2014) Total silver industrial demand is forecast to grow 27 percent, adding an additional 142 million ounces of silver demand through 2018 compared with 2013 levels, according to a new report issued today by the Silver Institute. Half of this growth will be accounted for by the electrical and electronics sector, but additional demand will be due to growth in other industrial applications, as highlighted in the report entitled, “Glistening Particles of Industrial Silver.”

The unique properties of silver – its excellent thermal and electrical conductivity, as well as its malleability, ductility and optical reflectivity – make it indispensable in many industrial applications, from watch batteries to industrial-scale solar energy systems, according to CRU Consulting, the London-based metals consultancy and authors of the report.

Increasingly, applications for silver are being invented, discovered and, importantly, commercialized. The report outlines the potential for growth from several of the most important industrial silver applications. Increasing demand for silver in solar panels, as well as in the production of ethylene oxide, automobiles, bearings and batteries, has influenced consumers in developed and developing countries to varying degrees, with silver industrial demand shifting among key geographical locations. Increased use of silver has driven consumption growth in both China and India and the trend seems likely to continue.

Silver Consumption in Examined Industrial Sectors – 2013 and 2018F (millions of ounces)

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Investors tapped to fund gold fraud film – by Ben Bland (Financial Times – December 10, 2014)

http://www.ft.com/home/us

Jakarta – Two of the world’s toughest mining tycoons battle it out with a star geologist, a chancer and a dictator’s children for control of one of the world’s largest gold discoveries in the heart of the Indonesian jungle, until it is exposed as a huge fraud.

The true story of Canadian company Bre-X Minerals, which collapsed in 1997 after attaining a market capitalisation of $6bn, reads like a movie script and the producer of hit film Home Alone is trying to raise $18m from mining investors to put it on the silver screen.

Malcolm Burne, a serial mining entrepreneur and former Financial Times journalist, has given Hollywood producer Scott Rosenfelt $150,000 of seed capital and together they are tapping minerals investors from Canada to Australia to fund a film about a scandal that changed the industry.

“It’s an amazing story with political and financial intrigue and thousands of people’s lives shattered as well as those who are still standing tall like Peter Munk of Barrick Gold,” says Mr Rosenfelt, who has tentatively titled the film Bre X: King for a Day.

Gold-mining companies struggled to raise money for years after the fraud, which prompted stock market regulators in Canada and Australia to bring in rules forcing miners to disclose detailed technical information about new finds.

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Waterloo-based inventor hopes to mine riches with Gold Sniffer – by Terry Pender (Waterloo Region Record – December 6, 2014)

http://www.insidehalton.com/halton/

KITCHENER — Inside a Conestoga College lab, Jim Kendall is building a device that could revolutionize mineral exploration — a camera that detects gold in rock samples.

Kendall calls it the Gold Sniffer. He co-founded a company, Kendall Technology, to bring his remarkable idea it to market. If all goes well in the coming months, the first Gold Sniffers will be ready next May and a more sophisticated version will come out next fall. Each will sell for about $55,000.

Kendall’s unique background and boundless curiosity led to his idea that a camera could be turned into a small, portable device that quickly and accurately determines if there is gold in the mineral samples collected by prospectors.

Currently, prospectors collect samples in the bush, which are then sent to an assay lab that conducts tests to confirm the presence of gold. It can take a month to get results. Between 50 and 90 per cent of the samples tested in the assay lab contain no gold.

Kendall believes the Gold Sniffer could quickly change all that. “The exploration geologist then in a couple of minutes right there on the site has the information about whether the sample has gold, how big the particles are, and the minerals associated with it,” he says.

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$4-million investment in golden property – by Len Gillis (Timmins Daily Press – December 3, 2014)

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

TIMMINS – Another junior mining company is betting it has found a viable gold property in the city with a heart of gold. Gowest Gold Ltd., a firm with solid roots in Timmins, is planning to fast track an exploration program for its Bradshaw gold deposit, located about 40 kilometres north of the built up area of Timmins.

The company held an open house Monday at the McIntyre Auditorium to bring shareholders, supporters and members of the public up to speed on the work the company is planning in the coming year.

One of the first things the company has planned is to prepare the Bradshaw site to remove overburden and create a water management infrastructure. The company has also planned significantly more exploration drilling, according to company president and CEO Greg Romain, a Timmins native.

He said the company is in an enviable position of having closed a $4-million financing deal with Fortune Future Holdings Limited of China, who Romain said has demonstrated significant faith in the project.

‘First of all it is one of the newest deposits, not near an existing mine, to be found what I’ve been told since Hoyle Pond was discovered 25 years ago.

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The 2015 Metals Outlook Series: Silver, Zinc, Lead – by Cole Latimer (Australian Mining – December 2, 2014)

http://www.miningaustralia.com.au/home

The market for base metals silver, lead, and zinc is finally seeing moderate action.

The period leading to the global financial crisis saw an explosion of growth, with the sector seeing a 30.9 per cent growth in revenue followed swiftly by a 56.2 per cent growth in revenues, creating a heady market.

However once the GFC hit the bottom swiftly fell out of the market, as prices retreated quickly, and inversely, to the rest of the mining sector.

A 13.2 per cent decline was chased by another period of plummeting revenue, with the sector recording a 43.5 per cent drop in revenue. It recovered briefly in 2010 before seeing another swift fall into negative territory in 2012 before the current lift into even pricing territory.

This, more than many real­ise, had a major effect on the Australian mining landscape as the nation is the largest lead exporter and one of the largest zinc concentrate exporters worldwide. So what lies ahead for the metals?

Much of it relies on the contin-ued weakness of the Australian dollar. IBISWorld research states that overall revenues and the price of the metals are “forecast to increase over the five years through 2018/19 due to the interplay of higher output, stronger US dollar prices for silver, lead, and zinc, and a weaker Australia dollar”.

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NEWS RELEASE: WESDOME GOLD MINES TO POUR ITS ONE MILLIONTH OUNCE OF GOLD AT EAGLE RIVER MINE IN WAWA, ONTARIO

December 1, 2014 – Wesdome Gold Mines Ltd is pleased to announce that it will pour its one millionth ounce of gold at its Eagle River mine in Wawa, Ontario on December 5, 2014. Since the first gold brick was poured on October 17, 1995, the Eagle River mine has produced 1.0 million ounces of gold from 3.4 million tonnes at a recovered grade of 9.2 grams per tonne, with higher grades realized in recent years and projected in coming years.

Initially purchased in March 1994 and put into production at a cost of $15.5 million, the Eagle River mine’s profitable production enabled the acquisition of the Edwards mine (1997-2002) and the Mishi mine (2002-present), also located in Wawa. High gold grades and an experienced work force have insulated operations during gold price down cycles enabling a 20-year continuous mine life to date. Wesdome emphasizes local and regional vendors through whom it now spends $30 million annually.

Wesdome has had recent drilling success in identifying the potential for another additional high grade mining area at depth and in recently recognized parallel zones within range of existing workings. Further drilling is underway to fully delineate and define two new parallel structures (the 7 Zone and 300 Zone), and their size potential. Prospecting efforts will attempt to trace their projection to surface. Wesdome expects to release additional drilling results later this year.

Mr. Rolly Uloth, President and CEO commented, “I would like to thank the entire team at Wesdome as well as our suppliers, whose hard work, dedication to mine safety, and commitment to productivity has made this significant milestone possible.

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Gold miners in trouble – Hambro/Raw – by Lawrence Williams (Mineweb.com – December 2, 2014)

http://www.mineweb.com/

A fairly downbeat presentation on gold mining stocks from Blackrock executives at Mines & Money London.

LONDON (MINEWEB) – A gloomy morning in London was not uplifted for gold mining stock investors by a decidedly downbeat update on the sector from Blackrock’s Evy Hambro and Catherine Raw. They were speaking to a packed hall on the first main day of this year’s Mines & Money event.

Perhaps the only positive comment on the sector from those running what is probably the world’s biggest gold mining investment fund, Blackrock Gold & General, was that after many years of underperforming the gold price, the stock index beta is now once again following gold more closely – perhaps small comfort to those who have seen gold stock investment decimated over the past two to three years, with the gold price itself at the lowest level for around five years.

One has to add though that the previous speaker, Peter Boockvar of the US’s Lindsey Group, was more positive on current prospects for the gold price pointing to the continuing scale of central bank money printing, despite the US Fed’s withdrawal; the Fed’s worries about dollar strength impacting the US economy; the symbolism of the Swiss gold referendum, despite the ultimate low vote, the loosening of import restrictions by the Indian government and with his comment that demand for physical gold is off the charts. He predicted that the gold price has bottomed – but warned that he also said that a year ago too!

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Swiss Reject SNB Gold Initiative, SRF Projections Show – by Catherine Bosley (Bloomberg News – November 30, 2014)

http://www.businessweek.com/

Swiss voters rejected a referendum requiring their central bank to hold a portion of its assets in gold, a measure its President Thomas Jordan termed an “invitation to speculators” that could have hamstrung the economy.

The “Save Our Swiss Gold” proposal stipulating the Swiss National Bank hold at least 20 percent of its 520-billion-franc ($540 billion) balance sheet in gold and never sell any bullion was voted down by 78 percent to 22 percent, according to projections by Swiss television. Polls had forecast the initiative’s rejection. Two other initiatives on tax privileges for foreign millionaires and immigration limits also were rejected.

SNB policy makers warned repeatedly that the measure, which also required the 30 percent of central bank gold stored in Canada and the U.K. to be repatriated, would have made it harder to keep prices stable and shield the central bank’s cap on the franc of 1.20 per euro. That minimum exchange rate was set three years ago, with the SNB pledging to buy foreign currency in unlimited amounts to defend it.

“The key word is relief, but it’s not a reason to crack the champagne corks yet,” said Janwillem Acket, chief economist at Julius Baer Group Ltd. in Zurich. Due to the rejection, “the SNB has more options and fewer constraints on monetary policy,” he said.

Investors anticipating more easing by the European Central Bank helped push the franc to a 26-month high against the euro earlier this month. ECB President Mario Draghi has explicitly cited government bond-buying as a possible policy tool.

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Central bankers’ love-hate gold relationship – by Lawrence Williams (Mineweb.com – November 28, 2014)

http://www.mineweb.com/

Why are most central bankers so keen not to proceed with gold repatriation? What is the true picture for gold held in official vaults?

LONDON (MINEWEB) – One senses a bit of a momentum growing in the precious metals sector. Is this just wishful thinking from someone who is something of a long-term believer in gold and silver, or is there some substance behind the feeling? After all gold is having trouble making any kind of decisive move above $1,200, being knocked back every time it sticks its head above the 1,200 parapet. But then, despite the knockbacks, it still seems to be clinging on, just about, to the $1180s and 90s with the occasional foray down a few dollars.

On the negative side the Swiss gold referendum looks to be going to come up with a No vote after unprecedented lobbying and scaremongering from the Swiss establishment. Even so the fact that this referendum is even taking place reflects the obvious unease which is running through sectors of the European financial community regarding the true levels of physical gold held on their behalf in the US in particular.

This suggests the beginnings of a growing lack of trust in the political and financial establishment. If this trust evaporates much further then government attempts to prop up their fiat currencies, which might otherwise be failing, will be called further into question as will government statistics purporting to show things are getting better the whole time while most of the people are not seeing the fruits of the so-called financial recovery.

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Barrick Gold considers asset sales – by James Wilson (Financial Times – November  27, 2014)

http://www.ft.com/intl/companies/mining

Barrick Gold is open to selling a wide range of assets as the world’s largest gold miner by output tries to cut its debts after a sharp fall in the gold price, according to one of its most senior executives.

However, co-president Kelvin Dushnisky said Barrick would not sell at any cost and made clear the miner was placing faith in a reshuffled management team and the productivity of its largest mines to try to ride out the storm engulfing the sector.

Gold miners across the world are eyeing more cost-cutting and restructuring after the price of the precious metal sank to four-year lows below $1,200 per ounce this month, leaving some companies haemorrhaging cash and investor support. Barrick’s share price has retreated to levels last seen two decades ago.

The gold price fall – from $1,900/oz in 2011 – has left many miners with lossmaking operations and sparked expectations of consolidation in the sector. This year Barrick and Newmont Mining, the second-largest producer, aborted advanced talks on a potential merger.

While many analysts have speculated that Barrick could return to talks with its US rival, Mr Dushnisky said discussions were “off the table”. He also accepted that Barrick would have little investor backing to try to acquire more mines from struggling rivals.

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Will the Swiss go for gold? – by Peter Schiff (National Post – November 27, 2014)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Peter Schiff is the CEO and Chief Global Strategist of Euro Pacific Capital.

For most of my career in international investing, I had always placed a great deal of faith in Switzerland’s financial markets. In recent years, however, as the Swiss government has sought to hitch its wagon to the flailing euro currency and kowtow increasingly to U.S.-based financial requirements, this faith has been shaken.

But November 30th a referendum in Switzerland, on whether its central bank will be required to hold at least 20% of its reserves in gold, will offer ordinary Swiss citizens a rare opportunity to reclaim their country’s strong economic heritage. It’s a vote that few outside Switzerland are following, but the outcome could make an enormous impact on the global economy.

Traditionally, the Swiss franc had always attracted international investors looking for a long-term store of value. That’s because the Swiss government had always kept sacred the idea of conservative central banking and fiscal balance. When the idea of the European common currency was first proposed, the Swiss were wise to stay out.

They did not want to exchange the franc for an unknown and untried pan-national currency. The creators of the euro had suggested that it would become the heir to the strong Deutsche mark. Instead, it has become the step-child of the troubled Italian lira and the Greek drachma. In retrospect, the Swiss were wise to take no part in the experiment.

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UPDATE 1-Former African Barrick Gold to go underground at North Mara – by Roshni Menon (Reuters India – November 27, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

Nov 27 (Reuters) – Acacia Mining Ltd, formerly African Barrick Gold Plc, said on Thursday it planned to start underground mining at its North Mara mine in Tanzania in the first half of 2015.

The open pit North Mara mine has a chequered past, with villagers illegally entering the site to scour tailings that may contain small quantities of gold, and some have been killed or injured by mine security guards and police.

“The North Mara decision to go underground … minimises our impact on the community, reduces the opportunity for illegal miners to enter that operation, and reduces our footprint with respect to needing land to dump waste,” Chief Executive Brad Gordon told Reuters on Thursday.

Acacia has been cutting mining costs, reducing its workforce and increasing output to counter the sharp drop in gold prices that has forced many gold and silver miners to shelve projects.

The company, unveiling its long-term strategy at an investor meeting in London, said the underground expansion was expected to produce 450,000 ounces of gold over a five-year mine life at an all-in sustaining cost (AISC) of under $750 per ounce.

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