Darlot Mine past production - our project is 10kms from one of the big WA gold projects21 Aug 2025 10:27
The history of this mine is quite extraordinary.
Prospector production at 16g/t for years taking out approx 500,000oz prior to the discovery of the underground Centenary deposit which yielded a resource of over 5moz with endowment approaching 8m oz. Its been in steady production since 1996 - 2007 where it was Plutonic's biggest cash flow generator (I remember - we owned the stock in the portfolio) and Plutonic was taken over by Goldfields for around $1bn which was then taken over by Barrick Gold in 2001. It kept going till Barrick shut down all small production as they were looking at the mega Pascua Lama project in Argentina and sold it to Goldfields. Red 5 bought it for $18m and turned it into a project taking them to a market cap of $2.8billion.
Darlot West is 10km away from this massive mine and it has enough smoke to make this a seriously interesting exploration project. I am excited to see what the board can do on it from here. WA gold is one of the few absolute shining stars of the mining world at the minute.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darlot-Centenary_Gold_Mine
Ore at Darlot-Centenary is mined in an underground operation at the Centenary deposit, discovered in 1996 next to the Darlot Gold Mine, which had a historical production in excess of 500,000 ounces.[4] Homestake began mining the Centenary deposit in 1998.[5]
The site, was originally owned by Sundowner Minerals, which was taken over by Forsayth group, then Plutonic Resources, a major Australian gold mining and exploration company.[6][7] Homestake Mining Company purchased Plutonic in April 1998 for more than $1.0 billion,[8] and, in turn, Homestake was acquired by Barrick Gold at the end of 2001.[9]
In October 2013, Barrick finalised the sale of their Australian Yilgarn South mines, consisting of the Granny Smith, Lawlers and Darlot-Centenary mines, to Goldfields. Barrick sold the mines as it considered them high-cost and required cash to compensate for the rising cost of its Pascua-Lama gold project. The three mines accounted for six percent of Barrick's annual gold output at the time. Goldfields purchased the mines for US$300 million, half of which had to be paid in cash while the other half could be issued in shares.[10][11]
In August 2017, Red 5 Limited purchased the Darlot mine from Gold Fields for A$18.5 million, A$12 million of this in cash and the remainder in shares. At the same time, the company also purchased the King of the Hills Gold Mine from Saracens Mineral Holdings for A$15.5 million in cash and shares.[12]
With the completion of their new processing plant at the King of the Hills Gold Mine, Red 5 will close down the Darlot process plant in 2022 and instead process the ore from the mine's underground operations at the new facility.[13]
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