News

March 19, 2008

Chocks Away For Archipelago’s Toka Tindung Gold Project!

By Alastair Ford

So finally it’s chocks away at Toka Tindung, the long-hidebound Indonesian gold project owned by Archipelago Resources. And no sooner were the chocks away than Colin Loosemore, Archipelago’s managing director, got on a plane and flew into town to update investors with the good news. No doubt he was chinking a few glasses after hours too. “I’ve been afraid to come to London up till now”, he joked, in reference to his continual assurances to the market that Toka Tindung would come good. Well, he’s delivered on his promise, and in the meantime gold has touched the US$1,000 mark, so the delay has meant that the project economics are much improved, especially since - although Archipelago has Australian roots - its costs are virtually all denominated either in the once-mighty greenback, or else in the local Indonesian currency.

So there’s some compensation to be had for his long-suffering investors, even if some of his directors, whose salaries convert into the Aussie dollar, have slightly less reason to be cheerful. The key question for Archipelago while the Indonesian authorities stalled on the Toka Tindung license was, and for a short-time longer will remain, ensuring that the company has enough working capital to see it into production. With no end in sight, it was a bigger ask of investors to keep the company...