News

July 03, 2009

Glass Earth Gold Plans A Rapid Advance To Modest Production As It Works Up One Of The Biggest Land Positions In New Zealand

By Charles Wyatt

For the third time in a matter of two weeks we have come across chief executives of junior mining companies who have used a bit of lateral thinking to overcome the slough of despond into which many of their peers have slid. The sad fact is that there is virtually no money around for greenfield explorers, so they have to find another way of funding their operations rather than just going to shareholders and fund managers with their hands out. Central Asia Resources persuaded the leading Australian engineering contractor Steelstruct to take a 49 per cent interest in a small gold project in Kazakhstan in return for funding and building the plant there. Steelstruct was not flooded for work, so accepted, and in this way may now get involved in Central Asia’s much bigger Altyntas project. Ariana Resources came up with the plan of processing ore from bulk testing veins at its Sindirgi project to produce gold and then marketing it as small bars of 99.9 per cent gold refined by a leading refinery in Turkey.

The third of our trio is Glass Earth Gold from New Zealand which was hit even harder than most in the fall-out during the second half of the year because its major shareholder, Canadian-listed St Andrews Goldfields , sold out. It sold its first batch of shares in April 2008 which brought its holding down to 30.5 per cent and more followed.  Another parcel of shares was given by St Andrews in payment for a debt and the recipient could not get on the telephone quick enough to his stockbroker...