Focus on gold and diamonds at pair of Aussie conferences

Plenty of Canadian content was evident at two major mining industry conferences, the Australian Gold Conference in Kalgoorlie and the World Diamond Conference in Perth.

Several speakers at the gold conference emphasized that while Canada is a major venture-capital market for exploration dollars, most of those funds are going outside the country, largely into Latin America.

Chairman Peter Vanderspuy of Delta Gold, which undertook a selection process before acquiring a base metal project in Zimbabwe, said Canada remains unattractive for several reasons, including land claims disputes and excessive concern over environmental issues.

“The politics were still good in the halcyon mid-1980s,” Vanderspuy said. “If you staked a claim over an old mine in Ontario, you didn’t inherit 50-plus years of environmental liability.”

Australia’s gold production is almost double that of Canada and could eventually eclipse that of the U.S., delegates were told. More than 75% of the gold comes from Western Australia, where exploration expenditures were ahead 40% in 1994, compared with the previous year.

At the diamond conference, which attracted about 370 delegates, the Lac de Gras play in the Northwest Territories took centre stage. Australia’s recent boom in diamond exploration was a direct result of the Canadian discovery; likewise, the market here went bust shortly after the downturn in Canada. Keith Ives, retiring director of research and information for the Central Selling Organization (CSO), predicted that Canada would become a major diamond producer in the years ahead.

Ives forecast a 6% consumer growth rate for diamonds during the next five years, which bodes well for any future Canadian production.

Global diamond sales currently exceed production, but Russia has been selling diamonds from its stockpiles on the open market, independently of CSO. Asia represents a major consumer market for diamonds today, Ives said. Among the presenters was Australian diamond producer Ashton Mining. The company is internationally, including in Scandinavia, where it has tied up more than 400,000 sq. km of ground in four countries: Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Republic of Karelia (across the border from Finland). In Finland, the company reports the discovery of 20 kimberlites, 13 of which are diamond-bearing.