PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Project house Macmahon Holdings on Thursday announced that its two-year contract with gold miner Newmont at the Martha mine, in New Zealand, had been cut short owing to safety concerns.
The contract, which was valued at A$38-million, had initially been scheduled to complete in April next year; however, Newmont Waihi Gold, the project’s operator, had told Macmahon that the contract would conclude before the end of June 2015.
The contract cancellation follows a slip on the north wall of the Martha openpit, and Newmont Waihi Gold has determined that geotechnical investigations would take considerable time to establish when safe production could be restarted.
Newmont in April announced the sale of Newmont Waihi Gold to dual-listed OceanaGold for $106-million in cash.
Under the terms of the nonbinding letter of intent, the price would include a $5-million contingency payment and a 1% net smelter royalty on a recent discovery north of Waihi’s current operations.