G-Resources, a gold miner in Indonesia that is led by Western managers and listed in Hong Kong, is eyeing opportunities to buy mines in Asia and Australia with proven resources.
The firm aims to produce one million ounces of gold annually by 2016.
That target is four times the 250,000 ounces annualised production it hopes to achieve by early next year at its Purnama deposits in north Sumatra, deputy chairman Owen Hegarty told the South China Morning Post.
To help achieve the 2016 target, the firm plans to expand the capacity of an existing ore processing plant in Purnama, where it began producing gold this month at its Martabe project, by about 10 per cent to five million tonnes per year.
After conducting more drilling and testing, G-Resources hopes to identify areas in Martabe that will allow it to add 150,000 to 200,000 ounces of annual gold production capacity in three to four years' time. At the same time, to reach the one million ounce mark, it plans to add a further 500,000 to 600,000 ounces of annual output capacity through acquisitions in the region.
'We prefer Asia, because we know the rocks and the regulations, and the countries are pretty much in the same time zone and are highly prospective,' Hegarty said. Countries like Myanmar, Indonesia, and the Philippines were also relatively underexplored compared with South America, and the governments tended to be 'mining-friendly', despite changing regulations sometimes.
