Switzerland's Mercuria Prepay AUD 40 Million to Support Restart of Australian Gold Mine

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On October 14, Switzerland-headquartered international commodity trading group Mercuria announced that it has signed a gold prepayment and long-term offtake agreement with Australian mining company Heritage Minerals, providing AUD 40 million in funding for the resumption of production at the Mount Morgan gold mine in Queensland. Under the agreement, Mercuria will purchase the first 210,000 ounces of doré gold, equivalent to approximately 6.53 tonnes of gold, from the mine after production restarts, over a four-year period. The project is scheduled to commence production in the fourth quarter of 2026, with the funding arrangement directly linked to the reprocessing of the mine's historical tailings and environmental remediation works.

The Mount Morgan gold mine is located in central Queensland, and the original mine was closed in 1990. Heritage Minerals is building tailings reprocessing facilities to recover gold, silver, and copper resources from historical tailings and waste rock dumps, alongside conducting pollution remediation in the mining area. The project adopts GreenGold Technology's proprietary resin-in-pulp extraction process, with the base processing plan involving 2 million to 10 million tonnes of historical tailings.

The project has previously secured a concessional loan of up to AUD 66 million from the Australian Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF), as well as funding support from the Queensland state government. NAIF's financing decision was made in December 2022, with a loan term of 4.7 years, and the funds are used for the construction of the tailings processing plant and related remediation infrastructure. The project also plans to build water treatment facilities to address pollution caused by historical mining activities and improve water quality in the Dee River and Fitzroy River catchments.

The tailings processing plant planned by Heritage Minerals will have an initial annual processing capacity of approximately 2 million tonnes. According to the project assessment published by NAIF, the works are expected to create 250 direct jobs during the construction phase and provide 150 jobs during the operational phase. The mine remediation works involved in the project will be carried out in parallel with metal recovery operations, including the treatment of historical tailings and the remediation of contaminated water bodies in the mining area.