Company Announcement - Kalgoorlie, home of the Super Pit, is the perfect location for the Australian Institute of Geoscientists Gold14@Kalgoorlie Symposium to be held between 8-10 October.  The symposium will be a truly international event, with delegates attending from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Pacific and bringing together notable geoscientists from academia and the gold industry. “This conference is shaping up to be the most important gold geoscience conference in Australia since Bicentennial Gold88 in 1988” said the symposium Organising Committee Chairman and industry consultant, Julian Vearncombe.  The highlight is a 3-day conference of talks and posters on various aspects of gold deposits, provinces and exploration.

Keynote speaker, Ed Eshuys, known for his involvement in the Plutonic, Bronzewing and Jundee gold discoveries in WA in the 1990s, will open the conference with an address on the importance of exploration to the Australian economy. “Australia’s gold exploration story is one of great success” Neil Phillips, a consultant and Adjunct Professor with the University of Melbourne said. “Claims that gold exploration has not been successful are potentially dangerous and may lead to misallocation of exploration and research funding. The Government data shows that Australia is not only replacing the gold that it mines but systematically adding to the inventory.”

“Since 1979, Australia has achieved what no other country has in this period, discovering 16,500 tonnes of gold at a cost of $40 per ounce. This low exploration cost is a measure of how Australia’s exploration industry has been unequivocally successful in discovering gold, especially when compared to today’s gold price of around US$1220,” Professor Phillips said. Recent Australian gold discoveries include DeGrussa copper-gold deposit , Tropicana deposit, McPhillamys deposit and Andy Well. The symposium will also hear of recent successes at Pegasus, and Invincible near Kalgoorlie.

In the past 10 years, Australia has added 6,000t of gold to its Economic Demonstrated Resource (EDR, Geoscience Australia, 2012). At the end of 2012, Australia's EDR of gold was about 9,909t. This figure suggests that there are enough resources for the next 30 years of mining at the current production rate. Gold is currently a primary output of about 75 mining and processing operations in Australia; and these mines produce about 250 tonnes of gold a year, almost 10% of world production, and second only to China. The goal of Gold14@Kalgoorlie is to present the innovative geological practices and technological innovations that are contributing to the continued success of an industry that employs 25,000 personnel across Australia.

Neil Phillips sums up: “The exploration industry’s aim is discovering better quality gold ounces which are higher grade, easier to extract and better located.  Whether such ounces are in new areas (greenfields) or established areas (brownfields) is of secondary importance. Commonly being near to existing infrastructure can be a big advantage.”

The Symposium runs from 8-10 October 2014 and will be accompanied by both pre- and post-conference field excursions and workshops.  Visit the AIG web site (www.aig.org.au) for a copy of the symposium circular.