News

June 03, 2008

Kingsgate Gets Ready To Expand If The Thai Government Lives Up To Expectations

By Our Man In Oz

Out of the forest and into the gold. That’s one interpretation of how investors have been treating Kingsgate Consolidated over the past six weeks. Since mid-April, the Australian-based goldminer with its major asset in Thailand, has enjoyed a remarkable 50 per cent share price rise from A$3.69 to recent trades at A$5.54. What makes that increase particularly interesting is that over the same time the gold price has fallen 5 per cent from US$929 an ounce to around US$885/oz today. Newcomers to Kingsgate might imagine that the cause of the difference is the discovery of more gold near the company’s flagship Chatree mine. They would be wrong. The cause is approval from the Thai Government’s Forestry department to expand the Chatree mine – not that this means Kingsgate is totally out of the woods just yet.

“It was a significant development, but we’re still waiting on a final Ministerial sign-off,” was how Kingsgate chief executive, Gavin Thomas, described the Forestry approval. He told Minesite’s Man in Oz during a brief chat in his Sydney office that the process of obtaining government approvals for the expansion, which will effectively double the size of Chatree, was coming to an end. “There’s no doubt that the government is keen to see Chatree expand,” he said. “And there’s also no doubt that...