News

January 27, 2009

ATW Gold Should Be In Production From Its First Australian Gold Mine Next Month

By Charles Wyatt

There could not be a much better time to be bringing a gold mine in Australia into production. As our Man in Oz pointed out in his weekly round-up, the price of gold out there is now very close to A$1,400 per ounce, thanks to the ruling exchange rate of US65 cents to the Aussie dollar. Good news, then, for Canadian-listed ATW Gold Corporation, a company that last year changed its name from the more ambiguous ATW Ventures to signal that gold was its target. Unusually for a Canadian company, its two gold mines are in Australia. This was a deliberate policy as both the chief executive Brent Butler and Robert Schafer, a director, reckoned they would make more money out of Australian assets if they had access to North American money.

Agreement was reached in October 2007 for the purchase of the first Australian asset, the Burnakura gold mine project. This lies in the West Yilgarn goldfields of Western Australia, near the Great Northern Highway to Meekatharra. The price for Burnakura was A$4 million plus a swathe of ATW shares and warrants, but concurrently the company managed to raise C$8.4 million through two Canadian brokers - which tended to confirm the point made by Messrs Butler and Schafer. The project came with 58.8...