News

March 11, 2008

Peninsular Gold Has A Strong Promotional Hand To Play With Malaysia’s Own Indigenous Mine

By Charles Wyatt

A major difference between Peninsular Gold and the Aim-traded peers who operate alongside it in South East Asia, is that its chief executive, chairman, and major shareholder is Malaysian, and the company’s assets are in Malaysia. Andrew Kam effectively owns 56.1 per cent of the equity, and a friend and co-director takes the combined interest up to 60 per cent. Not good for liquidity, but it allows them to get on with the job of moving the company towards production in a quiet and efficient manner. The Raub project lies in the Central Highlands and sits astride the Raub-Bentong Gold Belt, which runs north into Thailand and Laos. It has a history as a mining centre, but historic operations tended to be small and inefficient.

 

Andrew Kam, a member of a prominent Malaysian family, started out using Peninsular Gold as a consolidator of these small operations and his company mined there on a small scale using a gravity plant until 2006. At that stage a decision was made to upgrade to a carbon-in-leach plant to recover gold from refractory ore more efficiently. Production from this new plant at Raub is scheduled for September this year.

Peninsular Gold also has another project called Tersang to the north,...