Gold Mining Company based in Australia

Kingsgate Consolidated Limited is a successful Australian gold, silver and precious metals mining and exploration company. Through its wholly-owned Thai subsidiary Akara Mining Limited, it owns and operates Thailand's only modern gold mine. The company's results since operations commenced at Chatree have been strong due to its low cash costs, strong gold production, its successful gold exploration program and the improvement in the spot gold price.

Gold Investments

Kingsgate is publicly owned and its shares are traded on the Australian Stock Exchange under the code KCN. The Board and management understand that many investors hold shares in gold mining companies to participate in favourable gold price movements and as far as possible the company manages its gold hedge book to allow participation in gold price rallies.

Chatree - Asia Gold Mine

The Chatree Gold Mine is located 280km north of Bangkok in Thailand. Mineral resources that have been upgraded to proved and probable ore reserves provide a mine life of over 8 years. Conventional open pit mining methods are used at Chatree to extract gold ore from open pits.

The Chatree Gold Mine commenced production in November 2001 and has exceeded production expectations. Project construction was completed on schedule and under budget.

Mining and haulage costs are critical items in open pit operations. Chatree negotiated a mining contract with a local contractor which has resulted in significant cost savings and provided business for local enterprises. The mining agreement has worked well since inception for the benefit of all parties.

Gold Producer

Since commencing operations throughput has consistently exceeded the design capacity of the plant. The ore is passed through a jaw crusher where it is crushed down to less than six inches in size and then conveyed to a crushed ore stockpile. Crushed ore is fed to a semi autogenous grinding (SAG) mill and ball mill where it is ground to the consistency of very fine sand and pumped to the cyclone tower prior to entering the leach (CIL) tanks. Gold and silver is leached from the ore and is absorbed onto carbon grains.

The gold bearing carbon is collected and the metals are stripped from it and then passed through an electrowinning cell in which the metal is electroplated onto the cathode. The metal is recovered as sludge and is dried and smelted in a gas furnace before pouring into gold and silver dore bars. These bars are air freighted to an offshore precious metals refinery and upgraded to gold bullion.

Growth strategy

The company's strategy for growth is to continue to optimise its Thai gold mine, accelerate its gold exploration effort near the mine site and in the surrounding highly prospective region and to continue to assess other opportunities such as mergers, acquisitions and farming into joint ventures in gold prospective regions.