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consecutive years of NPAT. Underpinning that accomplishment a couple of those in our portfolio; Vivien being one and Marda
is the performances of both the Mt Magnet and Edna May being the other obvious one. Neither of those were ever going
operations. to be big enough to have their own processing plant and that’s
In FY2020, Mt Magnet churned out 167,129oz and Edna why basically they’ve been sitting there for as long as they
May produced 63,297oz, with the contribution from the latter have, especially in the case of Marda.”
expected to rise to circa 115,000oz in FY2021 as the new Ramelius also emerged successful from what turned into a
Greenfinch open pit comes online and satellite feed is trucked bidding war with Alkane Resources Ltd for Explaurum and its in-
in from the Marda deposit. demand Tampia Hill project, 148km south of Edna May, in late
Marda, about 190km north-east of Edna May, was acquired in 2018. First ore from development of an open pit is scheduled
February 2019 from the liquidators of Black Oak Minerals. All for FY2022.
four central pits are currently being mined and almost 300,000t Zeptner says while the company places a high importance on
of ore is stockpiled on site for future road haulage. exploration across its existing operations, strategic acquisitions
Trucking ore over considerable distances does not appear to were proving to be equally as fruitful.
faze Ramelius, having regularly transported feed from Vivien “We’ve found with exploration that unless you’re really, really
more than 300km by road to Mt Magnet for the best part of five lucky – and I think we’ve been pretty successful to date – not
years. many people are finding completely new gold mines, so you
“Historically people wouldn’t be comfortable trucking beyond need to supplement your exploration with that second arm to
let’s say 100km, whereas in our case a lot of it has to do the strategy which is acquisitions,” he says.
with access and our projects being relatively close to sealed “I think we’ve been pretty successful with picking the right
bitumen roads,” Zeptner says. acquisitions and a lot of that is due to a pretty rigorous DD
“These are not gravel roads. Once you get beyond 100km on process and having a team that’s been around for some time in
the gravel, the maintenance aspect of that becomes inhibitive. Ramelius to give you that consistency in terms of the way you
But trucking these projects mainly on sealed roads and having look at assets and what boxes you need to tick before going
better technology in terms of the tonnes you can fit on certain after something that you’d like to own.”
road trains helps keep those costs pretty competitive. Zeptner says the opportunity to add stranded assets such
“I think also the reality is there are some projects that are just as Marda and Tampia Hill to the production profile was not a
not big enough for their own processing facility and we’ve got consideration at the time of running the ruler over Edna May.

Ramelius has been mining underground at Edna May since
early 2019

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