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According to Howard, such companies should be receiving plaudits.
“If you are judging the best gold explorers, should you consider those
who have reinvented themselves in other commodities?” he asked.
“If you look at the explorers who were marked ‘gold’ a year ago,
those who have performed best are now in different commodities. If
we are judging on returning value to shareholders, the ability to pivot
towards drilling rare earths should be acknowledged.”
Lynda Burnett
For those companies wanting to remain in gold, Howard had the
perfect example of making the most of market trends.
Cote d’Ivoire as the judges met.
“Breaker Resources [NL] is a good example of creating value from
Kelly said Australian success in West Africa was understandable
that,” he said. “It made $80 million through its sales of the Manna
given the geological similarities to WA.
lithium project. They have done a good job in identifying something
“West Africa and the Yilgarn are similar,” he said. “You can deploy
of value but recognised that they could realise that value by selling it.
the same exploration techniques and technologies, which is not
They now have $80 million in cash for their gold exploration.”
something you can necessarily do in North America.”
Burnett said looking at the performance of junior explorers and the
The rush towards West Africa could be seen as a judgement on
volume of IPOs in 2022, it was apparent gold was going through a
WA’s maturity but Burnett said there was still plenty of opportunity
lean patch.
in Australia’s gold heartland.
“It has been a classic boom/bust cycle,” she said. “Last year, I was
“You are still seeing things popping out in the Yilgarn and that will
involved in 10 IPOs, this year it has been two. But in those times you
continue,” she said.
have to go back to the teams and their ability to perform.”
With such tough market conditions, are there gold explorers flying
Young agreed, saying increased drilling costs had combined with the
under investors’ radar? Several judges placed watching briefs on
focus on battery minerals to make it hard for gold juniors to advance
juniors for the 2023 Explorer of the Year shortlist.
their assets.
“Musgrave [Minerals Ltd] is doing good work at Cue, good
The GMJ judges widely selected Predictive as their runner-up,
exploration which is finding ounces,” Kelly said.
rewarding the West African explorer for continuing to take its Bankan
project beyond 4 moz gold. “Santana Minerals [Ltd] is definitely interesting but doesn’t market
itself very much,” Howard suggested. “It’s had a 95% increase
Howard praised the company for its willingness to press ahead with
on the share price on the back of 190% resource growth from
ambitious drilling programmes.
its Bendigo-Ophir project in New Zealand where the resource is
now 2 moz.”
Howard also put forward Astral Resources Ltd as one to watch, a
company Burnett has also been impressed with.
“They’ve put on 700,000oz resource this year and deserve an
honourable mention for the quality of those ounces,” she said.
After a tough 2022, all four judges expected 2023 to offer more
encouragement for gold explorers.
“I’ve been hearing the word counter-cyclical a lot recently in the
last 3-4 weeks from gold explorers but I think we’ve reached the
bottom,” Howard said.
Allan Kelly
Kelly also believes the tide is turning, particularly with more drill
rigs available.
“This year, they drilled a 630m step-out hole below the resource to
1km depth and it showed the mineralisation is still there,” Howard “Drilling costs have stabilised, if not come down, but rig availability
said. “That takes lots of guts and could’ve been a project-killer.” is good,” he said. “We’ve had drillers saying they would do for
scrip, against 2021 when you were told you’d be waiting two
Founding managing director Paul Roberts left the company
years for a diamond rig.”
during the year but Howard believes it is in good hands under new
management. Whatever the state of the sector in December 2023, the judges
were unanimous in the presence of at least one company on next
“I think it is about working to people’s skills sets,” he said.
year’s list.
“Paul saw the opportunity in Guinea and did a great job getting
the discovery and the position they are now in, makes the “They were in the right place at the right time but you have to
appointment of Andrew Pardey an excellent one because say there has never been anything like De Grey’s discovery in the
they now have the challenge of developing a mine and he has Pilbara before,” Kelly said. “That discovery has changed everything,
worked on the only two operating mines in Guinea.” and they have the whole belt to themselves to keep exploring,
amazing.”
Predictive was joined on the shortlist by Tietto Minerals Ltd
which was rushing towards first gold pour at its Abujar project in

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