Celebration of Mining: Maritana Minerals’ simple solution— less capital for more gold

The low-lying bush about 50km north-east of Kalgoorlie-Boulder conceals a prize a Goldfields mining company has taken control of with the aim of converting it into a cash-printing machine.

Not literally, of course — instead, Maritana Minerals will be spending about $101 million so the Black Swan nickel processing facility can treat ore from its nearby gold projects at a time when the price of the precious metal, although backed off from its record highs above $7000 an ounce earlier this year, is still in a historically exceptional position above $6000/oz.

Maritana picked up Black Swan when it took over Poseidon Nickel in October 2024 after the latter company abandoned its plans to fire up the plant following the nickel industry’s meltdown that year because of the flood of cheap Indonesian product on to the global market that depressed the price to uneconomic levels.

Maritana, which recently changed its name from Horizon Minerals, is due to make a final investment decision this quarter before spending 12 months converting the plant, with the aim of producing first gold by the middle of next year.

The plant will be designed for throughput of 2.2 million tonnes per annum to produce an average of 102,000oz annually across a five-year life.

A scoping study released in February stated there would be total mine production of about 10.9 million tonnes at 1.65g per tonne for 536,000oz of gold.

That compares to gold produced of 14,095oz across five toll treatment campaigns at Phillips Find north-west of Coolgardie, and 11,909oz so far during the 2026 financial year at its Boorara project 15km east Kalgoorlie-Boulder.

The ore for Black Swan will come from Maritana’s 10 open-pit and underground projects, which cover 1167sqkm in the Kalgoorlie-Boulder and Coolgardie areas, and will be trucked to site, with the longest distance being the 110km from Burbanks just south of Coolgardie.

Maritana said it had ore stockpiles of about 460,000t for 14,200oz on site at Boorara which would form the primary feed source for commissioning of Black Swan,

The company’s updated mineral resource estimate across its sites, released during the March quarter, is 34.32Mt at 1.7g/t for 1.88Moz of gold, with ore reserves being 4.3Mt at 1.54g/t for 214,000oz.

The scoping study, using a $5500/oz gold price, estimated Black Swan pre-tax free cashflow of about $959m, net present value of $631m, an all-in-sustaining cost of $3350/oz, an internal rate of return of 83 per cent, and a payback period of 18 months from start of plant commissioning.

Maritana states that refurbishing Black Swan at a cost of $101m across 12 months would mean a “faster, cheaper, and lower risk” path to gold production, with a new build costing more than $200m and taking 18-24 months.

Speaking on site at the plant this month, Maritana managing director and chief executive Grant Haywood said another $75m would be spent on associated infrastructure at Black Swan and he explained how the conversion project would save the company time.

“You fast-track your approvals by getting a brownfields site — so a lot of the approvals are already in place, and that’s probably half the cost of new because you can repurpose a lot of your current infrastructure,” he said.

“We are repurposing a nickel plant, turning it into a gold plant, and putting the CIL tanks on the back end of the plant to be able to produce gold bars instead of nickel concentrate.”

He said having its own mill meant Maritana was not competing for scarce capacity among existing operators.

“Every man and his dog is putting through every stone that’s got gold in it at the moment with the high gold price . . . all the mills are full, and the good news is we’ll unlock some of that infrastructure and processing capacity when we turn this plant on in 2027.”

He said the process of conversion was not overly complicated.

“The front end called the comminution circuit through the crushing circuit and the mills is exactly the same whether it’s gold or nickel, and we bypass the nickel benefication process and we basically go through to gold extraction from the ore — so it’s a fairly straightforward process,” he said.

Black Swan was last operational at the start of 2009, when Russia’s Norilsk Nickel put it into care and maintenance because of the prevailing economic conditions generated by the Global Financial Crisis.

The move put about 330 people out of work across it and the Lake Johnston operation Norilsk also shut down at the same time — a move that Hugh Gallagher, the long-serving head of the Kalgoorlie-Boulder Chamber of Commerce and Industry, at the time said was a “sledgehammer blow”.

Mr Haywood said it was great to be able to bring Black Swan back to life.

“This place has got a lot of history and a lot of people have worked here before and I think there’s . . . excitement of . . . bringing it back into shape,” he said.

“Using the infrastructure that’s already here, you don’t have to manufacture new things, you’re not disturbing more ground . . . it’s good to use what we’ve got in place.”

He said the plant was still in good condition despite the extended down time.

“The key components like the mills and the crushing circuit are in great nick so we just need to refurbish those,” he said.

“We’ll tidy up some of the conveyors . . . between the crushing to the milling circuit and then build a new gold circuit on the back end.”

He said there would be 60 jobs in and around Black Swan, including the processing and maintenance teams, with there being about 300 people once contractors and technical positions are taken into account.

He said the company wanted this workforce to be locally based in Kalgoorlie-Boulder as much as possible.

“Our chairman (Ashok Parekh) lives in Kalgoorlie, most of us have lived and worked in Kalgoorlie and raised our families in Kalgoorlie, so we love the place,” he said.

The project is “fully funded” after $175m was raised last November, as well as $4.65m through a share purchase plan, meaning Maritana had $233.5m in the bank at April 28.

Mr Haywood said the plant would be connected to grid power but also have diesel backup.

He said the immediate focus was to get the mill up-and-running and a few good quarters under the belt before future possibilities were contemplated and addressed.

“We can look at all milling opportunities, joint venture opportunities . . . and then we have larger growth plans at Black Swan as well,” he said.

“We’ll look to consolidate more in the region and ultimately keep growing this business.”

He said the conversion of Black Swan also presented an opportunity to use it as a multipurpose plant if the nickel industry became economic again.

“It’s probably a matter of when, not if, the nickel price turns that you can then use it as a multipurpose plant not only producing gold but also producing nickel,” he said.

“We’ve got 220,000 tonnes of nickel metal in the ground at Black Swan so great optionality there.”

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