Technical talk to the Melbourne Branch of the AusIMM, 25th March 2025
This presentation is an updated and extended version of one (with the same title) given at the AIG Conference in June 2024. This presentation has extra information who made the discoveries and the depth of discovery of significant gold and base metal deposits in Australia. It also compares Australia’s performance against the World.
Key observations are:
- Victoria makes up 3% of the available land are of Australia.
- The last decade (2014-2023) Victoria accounted for 4% of the total spend on exploration and found 7% (by number) of the country’s discoveries and ~13% of the estimated value.
- As a result, on a Value/Cost basis Victoria was the top performing State in Australia … with a “Bang-per-Buck” of 4.16 versus a national average of 1.26.
- A large part of the value created in Victoria is associated with the Tier 1 discovery of the Swan gold deposit at Fosterville. Notwithstanding this, leaving it out (and the associated large spend on exploration at Fosterville), Victoria still performed better than the national average.
- With a “Bang-per-Buck” of 1.26, Australia was one of the top performing regions in the World, where the global average was only 0.79. By comparison, Canada, the US and Latin America only achieved 0.83, 0.69 and 0.55 respectively
- At the national level, over the last decade, Junior companies accounted for 79% of all discoveries made in Australia.
- Since the 1950s companies have been progressively exploring under deeper cover. In the most recent decade the average depth of cover for gold discoveries was 120 metres for Australia (versus 89 metres for the World)
However, it is not all “roses” for Victoria. According to the latest Fraser Institute’s Survey for Mining, State’s Policy Potential Index (which measures a company’s ability to do business there) is currently ranked 48th best out of 86 jurisdictions. More importantly Victoria’s relative ranking has deteriorated in recent years – both against other Australian States and internationally. The main challenge are perceived concerns over the level and application of Government Regulations. The Government recognises this and is working on fixing this.